


Stamp Me with Your Signature

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Series: Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angel Family Values, Coffee, Detox, Emetophobia, Haunting, Height Differences, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Monster of the Week, Oral Sex, Season/Series 10, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-25 23:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 47,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3829039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Uh, how is Kevin a prophet if Chuck is a prophet?"</p><p>"I'm not sure what happened to Chuck, but, um... <a href="http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=8.07_A_Little_Slice_of_Kevin">he must be dead.</a>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. half empty

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic stems from these two posts I made forever ago on Tumblr: [Part I](http://apocalypse-patisserie.tumblr.com/post/65997037579/chuck-sam-shhhhh-we-dont-talk-about-the-fact) & [Part II](http://apocalypse-patisserie.tumblr.com/post/66008813005/oh-wow-youve-made-me-ship-chuck-sam-that-was).
> 
>  
> 
> **References Season 10 events. Dean/Cas background pairing.**
> 
>  
> 
> I do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, etc. No harm is intended.

Things used to feel like echoes a whole lot. Like déjà vu and those early-morning dreams you can't shake. Aside from the excruciating headaches and the self-inflicted insobriety, many of the things Chuck would feel in a day would be record-skipping repetition. Movements not his own, brought into real life. Not the loading and unloading of guns, like in the stories. But the parts of the stories too boring to throw in. The way one of them held a bowl to pour in cereal or tilting his jaw against the light to get the correct angle while shaving. Starting up the car, snapping his fingers when he forgets something on the list during a QuickMart run.

The hands would remember actions they had not taken. Things they had not felt.

He never got used to it. You don't live your life, growing up, being a normal, everyday loser, always wanting to get out of your hometown and be somebody and, instead, popping another video game into the system -- you don't live an average life and then _get used to_ apocalyptic super-vision fortune-teller bullshit.

It was a relief when it all left, but the relief, when it came, was overshadowed by a different kind of pain. Like missing limbs.

And that. He'll have to explain _that_ part later, he's sure. Because Sam is looking at him with a (familiar) mix of wonder, betrayal, anger, and relief.

Same as when he finds out anyone is okay when he expected they were dead.

So, Sam Winchester's life definitely eclipses his in the "weird" department because, yeah, Chuck has only been a prophet. Sam has been Satan. Sam has watched people die and come back. Sam has died and come back. Sam has had to wear the, "I thought you were dead, you bastard" look and flashed that hurt expression at more than one person. He's worn it often.

Maybe he understands the déjà vu thing, in that case.

A stack of ceramic plates explodes above his head and rains down on him and he's gotta leave the wonder behind. Sam is shouting at him, "Chuck, that way- THAT way," and there it is again.

The familiar wrap of Sam's huge hand around his shoulder.

Not something he experienced enough in real life to recall so vividly or be so willing to obey.

But he's felt it a thousand times through Dean's memories. Or, rather, his memory of what Dean's experience had been.

Sam's giant hand is familiar on him. Too-hot. Firm. Protective.

Another bullet zings too close and he knows he squawks like a fucking startled chicken but that's hardly something he can _help_ , you know? Not that anyone hears it over the sound of Sam returning fire, anyway.

It's in him to wonder: _How the hell did they even find me??_

He's sure there will be a story there. He's sure Sam will explain as best as he can if Chuck isn't bleeding out by the time they escape the diner's kitchen.

More bullets thwack into the industrial steel of the ovens and fridges.

"Ww-wh-why are demons using _guns?_ " he's baffled enough to ask.

"It's ever since Abaddon," Sam says in a rush, pushing Chuck at a crouch toward the back exit, and, "I'll explain later," he shouts over another blat of gunfire, and shoves at the back door.

They'd done their prep. They'd cased the place well and boxed it in before they decided to come in and scoop Chuck up. The door won't budge.

They hadn't known Sam was there, or maybe Sam just came up behind them.

Or maybe Sam saw Chuck in the window from across the street and bad luck just followed him in as he entered the diner. It's not out of the realm of everyday possibility for a Winchester.

Anyway, the place was prepped for this: the dumpster was pushed in front of the back door and there's no goddamn way out. Except through the front. Where two demons with automatic _fucking_ weapons are _fucking_ shooting at them.

Sam slams his shoulder into the door, repeatedly, a few times, before giving up. It doesn't budge.

Chuck is flinching from the clatter of bullets that shatter and perforate kitchen equipment. And he feels Sam's hand on his knee. It just touches down and grips, almost like he's about to use Chuck for leverage to push himself up-- but that's his "lost in revelation" face, not his "sprint for safety" face.

Chuck hates knowing that.

But he follows Sam's eyes to the flame now spreading on the grill where food was left and is burning, melting, grease catching fire.

Sam's eyes search and--

The walk-in fridge is dinged, badly, from the impact of bullets, but hasn't been breached.

Chuck knows where his body is about to get hauled and so at least he can sigh out regret and not tear his muscles getting dragged over.

Sam tosses him into the freezing cold, Chuck tumbles into a wire basket full of fruit, and he doesn't hear anything but the gunfire when Sam disappears again.

Until he pops back in, slams the door behind him, flinches as more bullets hit-

The explosion blasts all other sound away. There's not much more to hear.

«»

Not much more to hear until they're driving away from the smoldering ruins of the diner and he can almost tell that the sirens are bleating down the street in the opposite direction. Heading towards the destruction Sam and Chuck left behind.

Sam's driving with his eyes on the mirrors, driving like he means business. Driving like Dean. The red-light cameras clap them through at least two intersections because, as long as the road ahead is clear at a glance, Sam just keeps going.

They get to empty country, out past the suburbs, out into farmland, and then back into the next set of suburbs before Chuck realizes that he was hearing his brain cells dying or whatever, not ambulance sirens. He watches Sam's face for a while but it doesn't seem like he's trying to talk to him.

Sam is making sure they're not pursued. He spends a great deal of time on flat, straight, open road. And nobody's there behind them. Not through the next town or the outlying suburbs or the next stretch of farmland.

He knows precisely how far Sam wants to get before he considers stopping to assess their situation.

Sam pulls off the road right when he expects him to. As if Chuck knows his post-explosion routine.

He does.  
He does know Sam Winchester's post-chaos routines.  
He knows his pre-hunt routines.  
And the way extra ammo sits in his pockets.  
How often he flosses.

Chuck flexes his jaw like trying pop his ears during a flight. It doesn't change anything. The sound of the world, of the car, of the road, is dull. Whooshing waves and not much more.

Sam pulls into a Wal-Mart parking lot, way towards the back, where the stray carts never get picked up. He stops to breathe, leaves the engine running and pumping the A/C. One of the vents directed at his shoulder. There's a mighty fucking burn there, flame-red and vicious. No shirt material left caught in it because the Winchesters learned years ago that cotton chars right off, but synthetic blends melt and stick in the wound.

Chuck looks down at himself. He's in good shape other than the fuzz of noise.

Sam says something and he tries to get it from the combination of sound buzz and lip reading, but he's shit at it and can't pretend otherwise.

"Can't hear you," Chuck waves off.

Sam seems to get that and just slumps back into the seat. His ears can't be much better off.

Chuck waves again, but out front of Sam's face, getting his attention. He tries to yell as he speaks so maybe Sam will get the gist of it. "IS THIS YOUR CAR?"

Sam squints, but seems certain of what he's being asked and shakes his head.

There are no bags in here. So it was just a ride that Sam stole off the street to make their escape. Chuck was too busy being dragged out of the flames and thrown in the car to notice where it came from.

He turns and grabs a water bottle from a cup holder in the back seat. He passes it to Sam. He sits back down and opens the glove compartment. Three years worth of registration and insurance and paperwork from Valvoline but no first aid kit.

Chuck turns to Sam and points, then sort of makes a lever-pulling motion. "POP THE TRUNK."

Sam nods and pats around for the controls.

Chuck gets out, stands up. His initial inspection repeated. There really are no bullet holes in him. There's no blood, not even bits of spattered food. Nothing to draw attention to the fact that he just survived felony arson by destruction of property.

Nothing in the trunk but a spare tire and a can of paint.

He pats for his wallet, still in his jacket. Comes around to the driver's side.

He mimes a steering wheel as Sam opens the door and leans out. "DON'T DRIVE AWAY. DON'T LEAVE ME HERE," he shakes his head vigorously. Points towards the store.

Sam nods.

Chuck taps the shoulder that isn't wounded and Sam stands up, out of the car.

"Gimme," Chuck doesn't yell, grabbing for the bottle of water.

He opens and sniffs it. Could be the plastic is a little sunbaked but not moldy. He motions for Sam to turn and pours some on his shoulder, soaking the rest of his sleeve.

He assumes Sam hisses in pain.

He hands the bottle back and Sam nods.

«»

Chuck suddenly gets a burst of sound in the check-out line. The girl in front of him laughing on a cell phone conversation. He reaches around her to get to the Aquafina cooler.

The bandages and burn creams and whatnot wipe him out of cash. All he had left. He knew it would. It was why he didn't grab a new shirt for Sam. They'll have to circle back around to his motel if the coast is clear. Sam didn't pause at all, like he might have been anticipating that Dean would catch up with him or find him. He hasn't checked his cell phone.

That means Dean isn't travelling with him right now.

Chuck understands more of this than he wants to.

He gets back in the car and Sam buckles up, starts driving off before Chuck can pull anything out of the bag. They make a wide circle on the back roads, all the way round to where the trouble began. They pass through town and see the aftermath. The wet patch of ash that the diner has become from the fire hoses, all sorts of emergency vehicles there. A bike cop redirects traffic. A small crowd is trying to get into the frame as a local reporter interviews one of the wait staff for evening television.

They drive on, out to the sticks where there's a motel next to a lake, all sorts of boats hooked up to pick-up trucks in the parking lot. There's a fucking Loud Mouth Billy Bass nailed to the wall above the television and the curtains are hung up with fish hooks.

Sam's got his hearing back by then. He reaches to pull the rubbing alcohol out of Chuck's hands and Chuck pulls back. "Just sit," he demands.

Sam glares, but sits on the closed lid of the toilet where Chuck can reach him.

Chuck's hands know this. Again: he knows how do to this better than he's actually comfortable with. He's never dressed a serious wound himself, but he's seen Sam do this for Dean's thigh and seen Dean do this for both of Sam's hands. He's treated burns before. He's just never treated burns before.

After the aloe and painkillers start sinking in, Sam starts watching his progress. Chuck only notices that Sam has to look away to take off the tattered shirt.

"You're alive," he finally croaks into the silence.

"Against my better judgement," Chuck mumbles, untucking a fold of bandage and smoothing it against Sam's shoulder. Stretchy cloth tight to warm skin.

"Cas said since somebody else became prophet, you had to be dead."

Chuck's fingers still on the towel as he wipes his hands off. "Had to be?"

"Yeah."

Chuck is quiet for a moment. He turns and washes his hands again and dries them again. There's still something under his nails and he doesn't know if it's diner floor gunk or ash and it's grossing him out.

"It was a car accident. Wreck. It was a car wreck. It was me. I-" he pauses. "They revived me in the ambulance," it comes out sad. "I was drunk."

"You died and..." Sam thinks. "That must have been enough for the title to pass on to another prophet?"

"I don't care," Chuck says to his nails, picking at them. "It was quiet when I woke up in the hospital. I went to jail for three days, after. It was quiet. The judge let me off for it. I went home and," he shrugs. "Nothing. Never saw anything else again."

"Wow," Sam breathes, and it's weird. Reverent. "You got out."

"Insert _Godfather_ reference here," Chuck leans against the bathroom counter. "Any idea what that was about? I didn't see anything to make me think demons were on my tail. Didn't smell anything."

Sam shakes his head. "Pure chance, man. I didn't even see you there. I was just following these demons into town. Followed a path of suspicious deaths and there they are to grab you. I don't even know if they knew it was you until they saw you. I have no idea," he concludes with another shrug, at a loss.

It's quiet and Chuck is avoiding Sam's eyes as they keep bouncing back to his face. Because:

"I have so many questions," Sam says, quiet.

"Yeah," Chuck agrees. "Yeah, you do."

He would expect nothing less.

«»

Sam pulls on a fresh shirt, kicks off his shoes, both hands shove his hair back, away from his face. He grimaces as his shoulder protests the movement. "You live here?"

"I was in town for a minor league playoff. I'm a couple hours out," he points vaguely to the east.

Sam nods and, for a second, Chuck believes he's gonna be spared more discussion by strategy: how Sam can maybe find the demons, eliminate the threat, and Chuck can leave on his own, go back home, not have this mess follow him.

But Sam's face is that quiet, sad wonder again. He's taking in the sight. Not that Chuck is much of a sight.

Sam goes soft like that over anybody, though. Anybody who _lives_.

Chuck knows where it comes from. Sam's life is hard. To watch so many people die and come back and worse: not come back.

When they do, after the expectation that resurrection simply won't happen, after resignation has set in and mourning has long passed, it's amazing to him that this life, so harsh, would bless him by spitting someone back out into the land of the living.

Usually, people don't live.  
Not in Sam's experience.

And Chuck has been living for a while, in the quiet. Not quite a spectacular life, no wife and kids, no leaps and bounds in progress. He does write for a living now -- a real living. But nothing remarkable.

Sam sits on the bed so Chuck takes the kitchenette chair. Uncaps the third water he bought at the store and waits.

"DUI crash?" Sam confirms.

"Yeah. Um. I woke up a week after Stull. No idea where I was. I guess I'd driven toward the coast. Don't know what I was trying to do. Just woke up and it was all quiet. Don't remember what I even did with anything. My computer crashed. When I got back home, there was nothing on it. I packed up. Didn't know what would happen with-"

He doesn't say: _Without you in the world. Without Dean in the world, because surely Dean would take himself out of the world after losing you._

Chuck hadn't kept track of anything. He moved to another town. He got a shitty apartment. When he saw what he thought was a demon omen one day, he ran home, threw his shit in his car, and found another town. It's been like that for maybe 8 months at a time, ever since. He writes sports articles for local papers, then blazes out of town when he gets antsy. Or sees something he doesn't trust out of the corner of his eye.

"Everything's been quiet?" Sam asks, "You've been safe?"

"I saw you guys on the news. They were looking for you again. You got 'killed' again. I know there's a story there. Every time it looked like something was happening, though," he shakes his head. "I haven't seen anything. Haven't wanted to."

He doesn't mention he caught the tail end of a high school play. He didn't want to be there, but he has a hard time disappointing children. He remembers all the lives Lucifer drowned in sudden storms and snuffed out in unprecedented earthquakes. He remembers seeing the news before it was on the news. All the many steps and signs of the apocalypse. He can't see children crushed anymore. He was there for twenty minutes. He left. He wasn't seen.

Chuck made sure he wasn't seen.

"Do you know?" Sam asks, suddenly, veering off. "Do you know what's happened? With the angels? With Dean?"

Chuck shakes his head. "No."

"You didn't see anything after Stull?"

Shit.

He saw plenty after Stull. That last drinking binge, he saw the whole thing play out in his head. He wept for it all, sloppy and tossing his cookies into the toilet bowl, when Sam was falling into Hell. He saw glimpses of what would be Sam's next decades in the cage, the archangels brutally toying with him, reducing Adam down to molecules just for something to do.

Oh. He saw.

He saw the crumbled mess of Dean's insides.

He saw Castiel's great intentions.

He saw a great shining light and then he saw nothing.

To this day he's not sure if that was life leaving him, heaven opening for him, the angels, or just headlights passing before he'd wrapped his truck around a tree.

It was all ugly. It was worse than the apocalypse itself, what was meant to be of the future.

He didn't want to see it, but some part of him saw anyway and as those events unfold they echo in him. He knows something huge is happening somewhere in the world. He knew that weird meteor shower was something.

Something big.

But he didn't question it. He holed himself up in his apartment with his vodka and a freezer full of Hot Pockets.

He doesn't need to know what happened to Sam, for him to come out the other end quieter and with this cautious edge to his huge presence.

He doesn't need or want to know.

But he's gonna.

Something in him knows that Sam needs him.

Even if all he is now is just a set of ears. Even if he doesn't hold the secrets anymore.

He licks his lips. He could use a beer for this, at least. If much of what he once knew remains true about Sam, he's sure there's some in the mini fridge.

He taps the cap of the water bottle.

"You wanna tell me?" he asks, quiet.

Sam looks like he wants to let him go without unloading. Without burdening anyone else. He looks like he's gonna shrug it off and start reloading his weapons and busting out a map to determine where the demons are holed up.

So Chuck settles back and gives Sam his undivided attention.

Sam Winchester deserves to talk, if talking would help.

Nobody else in this world, except maybe Dean, knows how much of himself Sam sacrificed for humanity.

He kept this planet whole. He did it by going down to Hell itself and letting Lucifer grind his teeth on him.

"You don't wanna hunt in the dark, right? Not on your own." Chuck shrugs, pointing out the late hour. "I've got time. We can figure this out in the morning. And then I can, you know. Go home after."

Sam nods. Looks doubtful.

Sam has done this before. He'd asked Chuck what he knew.

About the demon blood.

He'd known things about Sam that not even Dean knew.

"S'okay, Sam."

And that maybe doesn't cover the scope of things that have happened in the intervening years, but it's exactly what Sam needs to hear. It's what he needs to know to start talking.

«»

Sam leaves early, with the sunrise. Chuck eats the last piece of cold pizza for breakfast, then sleeps in, on the boxy, short couch that he fits on _perfectly, thank you_.

Sam only laughed a little because his own feet hung off the end of the motel bed and there are _actual_ advantages to not being a hundred feet tall.

It's all over by lunch. Sam comes back torn to shreds, but Ruby's knife is still around, it seems, and Sam cleans the blood and char and sulfur off while Chuck pulls the first aid supplies out again.

"Did you find out what they knew?"

Sam dries the knife off and tosses it out toward his bag. They're cramped into the tiny bathroom for the second time and Chuck has to give him an unimpressed look and a "Seriously?" before Sam will sit down, like before, so Chuck doesn't have to stand on his toes to help him clean the blood out of his ear.

"They just saw you, that was all," Sam closes the lid of the toilet and sits. "One of them recognized you but neither of them were really sure. The whole thing was a surprise. I don't know what they were doing for Crowley or if they're some of the demons who refuse to answer to him. But I really doubt they sent word down to him about you. You're fine," he concludes with an airy surety.

"And if I'm not?"

"Lebanon, Kansas. Google it."

"Right. You guys have a place now." Sam had said something about that last night.

"I know. It's still weird for me, too. I mean. It's not bad. It's just weird."

Chuck grimaces as Sam pulls a clump of some kind from his hair.

He hands Sam a wad of toilet paper for it.

"Can I ask? Um. Is Dean there? Now?" Burning up, alone, with a mark on his arm that gives him super-duper murder powers.

"He's not locked up there. He's fine. Things are just... complicated."

Sam still hasn't explained all that. But from the outline, Chuck gets this much: Dean is sort of evil and maybe sort of losing his soul. Cas is sort of torn up but regained his grace. Crowley is sort of in charge of Hell when anybody listens to him.

"That's why you're hunting on your own?"

"Don't tell _him_ that, though. I told him I was just taking a break to go do research. He doesn't know. He'd. He'd be."

"Pissed. I know."

"It freaks me out how much you understand him."

"Thanks, I'm glad someone else feels that way."

"Chuck?"

"I can't get this--"

Sam's hands come up to stop both of his, crumpling the bandage wrapper in his hand.

They're still for a long moment.

"Your hands are shaking. That's why you can't get it open. Are you okay?"  
"Fine," Chuck bites out.  
"Uh-huh."

Sam searches him for a moment. Takes the bandage, rips it open himself, and passes it back to Chuck so Chuck can apply it to the gash on the back of Sam's neck.

"You ever dry out, Chuck? After the accident."

"After the wreck. No."

"That's an important distinction to you," Sam observes. "Not an accident."

"Well, I did it to myself." He drops the bottle of alcohol when his hands tremor. The cap was still on but the bottle bounces to the far corner of the bathroom.

"Chuck," Sam waits.

"I know." He hasn't had a drink since the day before the diner attack.

"Hey," Sam moves a hand up to grip his upper arm. "I'm not gonna lecture you. And I'm not even gonna try to fix you if you don't want it. But you know I have to offer. You could- I mean. I could hang out in town for a few more days. We could go through this. Sweat it out of you and you wouldn't have to do it alone." The offer is genuine but light. There's no pressure behind it because he's used to Dean. He's not used to having other friends. Friends who might occasionally accept help.

Sam wants to have friends who accept help.

It's that which stops the dismissal Chuck was going to give.

He was always eager to part ways with the Winchesters before. He knew what followed them and he saw, first hand, what could be coming for them at any minute.

Maybe it's foolish to think his distance from the supernatural leaves a buffer between himself and the bad guys. But the whole thing -- world-ending disasters, demons and angels -- it just doesn't seem so close to him right now. Doesn't seem urgent.

What seems immediate and important is Sam Winchester's torn-up body right here under Chuck's hands. It's important that, in this time, Sam could have been quietly researching a cure for Dean, but, instead, he was out saving people. Like always. And Chuck's own skin was saved this week because Sam chose not to step out of the game for even one minute. He kept fighting and Chuck is still alive today because of it.

Sam never sees it that way. He sees everything he touches turn to shit and decay.

He thinks ill of himself. All the time.  
He genuinely doesn't deserve to.

Chuck only has scraps left. That's his life. Holding it together like a cardboard hovel sealed with spit and packing tape. He doesn't care. He just doesn't wanna suffer. Doesn't want pain and agony. When he dies, he wants it nice and silent and in his sleep.

He doesn't care.

And still, the thought of Sam loathing himself breaks the chipped ceramic of Chuck's poorly-aged heart.

What if Chuck gave Sam the chance to really fix something for once?  
What if Chuck let himself be fixed for a little while to put Sam at ease?

What if Sam had a fucking friend?

He realizes he's been quiet for a while when Sam pries the wet washcloth out of his hands and starts cleaning his knuckles with it.

When Sam looks back up, Chuck nods.

«»

Chuck's hands rattle less when he's had a big, honest lunch.

But he wants whiskey. And he wants to be drunk. And by this time in the afternoon, simply from habit, he's used to having drunk himself into nap time.

They leave the restaurant and keep driving until they find a shopping center and Chuck heaves himself out of the car.

Sam left his charger at home, so he needs a Best Buy or something and Chuck finds himself prattling on about the just-released Blu-rays while they're in the check-out line for, like, a solid half hour.

"Jesus," Sam rolls his eyes and shifts, gingerly shrugging his sore shoulder. And, at first, Chuck thinks he's already sick of him, but then Sam is suddenly taking up his own rant about how people can be "real assholes to service staff, I mean, wow, what a big man, trying to make a cashier feel like shit just because she's enforcing return policies. Would you get over it so the rest of us could leave the store sometime _today_ , please?"

He's loud enough that the dumpy little man and his whole family turn to glare at him. Sam doesn't give a shit. He's already towering (and more so, just standing there with Chuck at his elbow), and then he shrugs to his full height, shifting his weight and meeting the peeved stares one for one.

Another cashier finally calls for next in line.

And Sam smiles at her, chats sunnily, admires the tattoo that curls down to her hand, and wishes her a nice day.

Chuck has no fucking idea how everyone in a half-mile radius isn't leveled with guilt just from being in the same vicinity. Sam is the nicest, most decent guy on earth.

"Oh, god, there's a Starbucks," Chuck stops in the middle of the parking lot, wide-eyed. Sam tugs him out of the way of a car turning into an empty spot. "Caffeine, Sam."

Sam squints around the shopping plaza. "I don't see-"

"In the B&N," Chuck points.

"Oh. I could go for a bookstore."

"For _coffee_ ," Chuck says, "and I'm gonna lose you in there for the next two hours."

Sam frowns, but he knows it's true.

"Call it an hour. You take care of your caffeine headache, I'll set an alarm on my phone. I swear we'll leave in an hour," he compromises.

But they both end up in the aisle with the graphic novels, Chuck balancing comics on top of his venti drip and telling Sam which series he ought to start.

Sam busts out one of his fake credit cards and they both leave with a bag of books they didn't intend to get. Chuck catches him up on _The Walking Dead_ while they drive around looking for a spot for dinner.

It's good. It's a nice way to spend the afternoon. And he goes through his coffee quickly enough that he doesn't slosh any on his lap or the interior when the shaking starts up again and doesn't stop.

«»

Dinner happens twice. Once at the Chinese restaurant, with Sam pouring the tea.  
Once with the both of them crammed back into the tiny motel bathroom, with Sam pouring the water, crouching down, offering the glass to Chuck as he hovers miserably over the toilet.

The tremors have been running through him for hours, now. Sam drags the comforter off the bed and wraps it around Chuck where he sits on the floor, within puking range of the bowl.

"T-tt-thanks, this has been-n fun, Sam," he grouses.

Sam drops back down again, to sit on the nasty old floor with him.

"I know," he says. "You know what, though? Dean wouldn't ever do this for himself. So you make it through the next couple days and you can say you're stronger than a Winchester."

"People would have to know and app-pp-ppreciate what it means to be a Winchester," he starts but has to clench his jaw tight and can't finish his point on mental horrors made physical and what, exactly, the boys have to endure on a daily basis.

"Yeah, I know," Sam repeats, because he gets the point anyway.

Chuck swallows dry, loudly, for a few minutes. Sam holds up a fresh glass of water, but he doesn't really want it. Until he does. Then, "Coffee?"

"It's ten at night."

"Don't care about sleep, ca-c-" a shiver wracks him. "Headache."

Sam shifts himself over and reaches up to grab a bag off the counter, drops back down. "You don't need to apply more caffeine to the problem. Aspirin. Nothing stronger. We're not going in the other direction and risk getting you hooked on pain pills. You can have more coffee in the morning, but you'll wanna sleep through this soon."

"Headache," Chuck repeats, moaning, the bolts of it shooting up his forehead. Dammnit.

"I know," Sam says again, and it really sounds sympathetic this time. He turns to grab the glass, unwinds Chuck from his blanket cocoon to pull his hands out and wrap one around the cup. He passes over the pills and Chuck has to make sure he's not gonna barf again before swallowing them down.

Sam takes the glass back and pulls the comforter back around Chuck. He sits beside him and rubs at his shoulders, generating heat that makes Chuck shiver, too.

He has to admit it's nice. He's cold and sweating at the same time and it reminds him of what Sam offered at the beginning. To help him "sweat it out." He wonders, briefly, if the endorphins or whatever from sex would help the headache abate.

He knows the broad shape of Sam's naked back in the moonlight. He's seen more of their lives than he wants to have, of course, but he's also not straight enough to deny having beat off to memories of those images. Sam and Ruby fucking. The times Sam had motel rooms to himself and stroked his own body down in the shower.

_Sweat it out._

He sways under the back-and-forth rub of Sam's hand.

Yeah, it would be real nice, maybe. If he wasn't worried about puking every three minutes.

It doesn't exactly help when Sam says, "I've been here, too, you know? It wasn't just the blood. The demon blood," he makes sure he's specific about that. "It was the power it had over me and the power it gave me."

That only gives Chuck images of himself with his hands on Sam's tanned skin, feeling the might in those muscles.

Geeze.

He clears his throat and shakes the blanket a little loose from himself.

"Too hot?" Sam asks.

It comes out sounding strangled, "Yeah," Chuck says, "yeah, a bit."

«»

Sam wakes him up and there's a piercing yellow slat of sunlight that falls across his hands.

"Think you can eat something?"

Chuck blinks and thinks. He doesn't really know.

There's a hand at his forehead before he can verbalize an answer.

"You're still really warm. Chuck, I've got crackers and cheese. I think you should have at least some of it and take more aspirin, okay?"

"Okay. Yeah."

Sam lets out a relieved breath and helps him to sit up.

"My throat hurts," he says, when Sam turns away to open the cracker box.

"You were shouting a lot."

"Shouting?"

"You thought the demons were coming for you again."

Sam doesn't sound sadly sympathetic about this. Normally Chuck would expect the guilt to be rolling off him and slumping his shoulders.

"Huh."

He waits while Sam grabs everything. He spots a half bottle of water on the table and reaches for it. It's just out of range. Sam is already there, passing it into his hand before he can look up.

"Hallucinations," he elaborates. "It lasted a while. You remember?"

"My brain is baking. I don't remember much but the Chinese food."

Sam is smiling. A smooth and happy smile when he comes back to the couch to hand over a stack of crackers. He sits on the floor and shakes the pill bottle rhythmically while Chuck chews.

"I don't know how I'm hungry. But I think I am."

"I've got tea, too. Black. It's not coffee, but you can probably hold it down right now."

Chuck nods, still trying to parse this sunny expression out. "Thanks."

Sam heaps sugar in it and grabs a packet of cheese sticks.

Pieces come back to Chuck. Vivid shapes of demons in the night, coming for him right here in this room. Coming with old-timey torches and setting fire to the couch like it was a funeral pyre.

He reached out for Sam and Sam was hot as flame, too, and stronger than the fire.

Even in the throes of detox hallucinations, he trusted Sam to save him.

That's good, though. It's about time Sam realized there's somebody in the world who doesn't doubt him.

When Chuck's hands are shaking again, he slumps and wants to turn over and be free from reality for a while longer. Sam stuffs the pillow back under his head and takes his water, sets it aside.

If he did this at home, alone, he'd never make it. He'd crawl into the nearest bottle and promise himself never to attempt it again. If he joined some group or went to some meetings or if he crashed again and ended up back in a hospital, he'd be back at it as soon as he was out of sight, wrapped up in the dark of his apartment.

Sam smiles and turns back to his laptop, still sitting on the floor next to the couch.

He'll turn away and let Chuck sleep. He'll wait another night for Chuck to sweat out the last tumblers of vodka he'd soaked up on Tuesday. He'll be there for Chuck if the shadows come back in the night.

He's kind of a friend. And he'd be a good one.

Chuck has fewer friends than Sam and Sam has maybe one, two? Total.

Sam could use a friend and Chuck could use a friend. And, you know what?

It's worth it to ask.

"Would you come around, maybe? Or. I donno. I could come see you guys," he says, quiet, like a series of uncertain questions.

Sam turns his head, looking hurt. Like they'd already decided this and he's wounded that Chuck's forgotten. "'Course, man. Any time."

Chuck's eyes droop just looking at the sincerity there and that's exactly how he falls asleep, instead of turning into the cushions and pressing himself in 'till he suffocates.

«»

It's not like a hangover, it's like a flu. Sam knows how to handle a recovering system, in either circumstance, and the dry crackers and cheese are exactly what Chuck needs. The tea and sugar, too. Simple. Feeding the body with the bare minimum to keep it wired up right. And water, too. Loads of water. Chuck keeps shaking himself back from zoning out, his eyes falling on his pants between his knees, the crummy floor of the tiny bathroom again. Pissing out the toxins.

He thinks, each time: _What's the point?_ Because he's been doing this so long that he can't quite imagine his life without the crutch of alcohol.

He didn't have a whole lot of adulthood happen to him before the headaches, the drinking, the writing, the prophecy.

So maybe he's not entirely sure how to live life without it.

But the way Sam's face will bloom into this proud little grin...

It's completely fucking absurd. But Chuck almost thinks that he actually might not pick the bottle back up when he and Sam part ways.

That might be a problem, actually. Heading back to his apartment where there's a half-empty stockpile of various liquors in every room. Half the fridge filled with cheap beer.

Jesus. What's he gonna do with all his money when he's not busting twenties on rum?

Probably get fat. Isn't that what people do?  
Or is that quitting cigarettes?

He finds himself back out in the main room when he shakes out of his thoughts and he glances down to make sure he zipped up because, hey, when did he walk out of the bathroom? What the fuck?

"You with me, Chuck?" Sam lobs one of the empty water bottles at him. It glances off his hand. Was he supposed to catch it?

"Sit down before you tumble down," Sam advises, so he does. "How is it, now?"

"I think I'm disoriented."

"I think that if you _think_ you're disoriented you are, in fact, disoriented," Sam says, with a smile. He reopens his laptop and asks Chuck where he left his car when he got into town.

Shit.

His car. It was in the diner parking lot. "It's probably totaled. Or towed."

"Hmm," Sam clicks around, looking for news updates on the explosion. "Yeah. We might have to sneak past the cops to get to it. If it's still there."

Chuck assumes that's what he'll be doing with his booze money, then. Another new car.

And maybe if it's time for another new car, it's time for another new apartment. "If the demons found me just two hours away from home, maybe I shouldn't stay in the state."

He'll need a new job, anyway. This is the third article he's neglected to send to press for the guys who hired him. He's probably not welcome back at the office.

"I donno. It seemed like they didn't expect you to be there."

"They just happened to have machine guns in their car? To come back in and haul me out with?"

Sam pauses to think. "They saw you, then went back out, or they came in the first time with the guns?"

"I donno. I didn't notice them before they came in-- ss-stalking towards me and like. I donno. Yelling. I donno. I don't remember all of it. It happened so fast. When did you even come in?"

"I saw them from across the street. I knew they'd been in town at least ten hours before I got here. But, again, they seemed to be working alone. A lot of demons have fractured off from the hive. Crowley's not exactly keeping his house in order. It could be that they didn't say anything to anybody about finding you," Sam shrugs, half hopeful, half ready to admit it's not a realistic hope.

Chuck sighs, flops a hand in the air. "It's time anyway," he laments. "Time to move on."

"Well, you know-" Sam starts, but doesn't finish. He flounders, wordlessly for a second before recovering. "You know what, if we can get your car, I'll follow you out there. We'll lay some wards until you can get a new place."

Then he laughs.

"What the hell am I saying? You probably have wards down," he shakes his head at himself.

"No, I don't," Chuck admits.

The silence suddenly seems to ring out.

"You don't use wards," Sam says.

"Nah."

Sam blinks at him. And that's when Chuck feels it: the judgment.

This is what drunk-Chuck did. He was reckless. He obliterated himself and then obliterated a car and then he played fast and loose with his life in a world where he knows damn well that ghosts, demons, gods, and all manner of creepy-crawly, egotistical, supernatural assholes dwell with him.

He knows all the wards, yeah. He can trace them in spray paint with his hands, knows what it feels like to scrawl them in chalk. He could draw them with his eyes closed, though he never actually has in his life. He can feel the surety of Sam's hands on the lines and curves of a devil's trap.

And, still, he has never set one himself.

He flexes his jaw. Drops his eyes.

There's not much to protect, anyway. You know, face facts: Chuck's an ex-prophet. Sure, he knows stuff, but nothing current. He made sure of that. He doesn't know anything...

Except Sam told him two days ago where it is that the Winchesters dwell.

So now he's worth pursuing. Worth tying to a chair and cracking open.

And he remembers Jimmy Novak. Remembers that the demons ran him down despite him knowing almost nothing about the angels.

It doesn't matter to demons. One inch of information is worth a thousand miles of pursuit. For as dumb as they are, it's ingrained into them to play smart, or to _seek_ smart, at least.

"Chuck," Sam draws his attention up again. He looks worried, maybe.

"Wards. Yeah. I can do that."

Sam looks worse. Like he thinks Chuck is just gonna put a gun in his mouth instead of whiskey when he gets home.

Chuck doesn't even own a gun.

"Sam. I can... I'll put up wards. And then I'll move and there won't be any reason."

"There _will_ be a reason, Chuck. Just put them up wherever you go," he sets his laptop aside and rises from the bed, crouches by the door and pries the carpet up, away from the baseboards to reveal the paint of a circle. "I've even got them here. We put them down every time."

Yeah. He knows that. "And salt on the windows," Chuck nods.

Sam looks over his shoulder at him and just stares for a long moment.

"You really don't protect yourself at all," he marvels.

"Not used to having to," Chuck aims for flippant and misses. "I used to have an archangel tethered to me. I never saw much reason."

"Yeah, back when you were _a prophet_ but how many years has it been, Chuck? You're a civilian who knows too much now."

This is exhausting. "I don't know anything," he whines. "Everybody knows everything I know. The _books_."

"Really?" Sam rises and stomps the carpet back flat to the floor. "Because I seem to recall another conversation we had where you _told me_ you knew more than you put in the books," he points accusingly at Chuck. "You didn't put our full names in the books, you didn't put the demon blood-- I've read half of them, Chuck, I know there's other stuff you skipped over. Don't you think anybody'll be curious? About what you know and you never told? Or about the authenticity of the final books that were put out on the internet?"

Shit. "You're kidding me."

"Musta been Becky," Sam shrugs, "that's all I can think. What did you do with your computer after it fried?"

"Nothing," Chuck shrugs.

Another ringing silence.

"What do you mean by 'nothing'?"

"I mean, I hated that house, it was dusty and old and I couldn't afford it anymore and I just... left. I just took my clothes and left town and. Moved. I donno. I left all that shit there, I didn't have any use for it. Any space in my car."

"So they probably sold off any of your stuff, your furniture and books and anything left of value, and... maybe she scooped it up at auction and had someone dig the information out of the drive."

Chuck shrugs again. He doesn't know. He doesn't care. Becky was... jesus, that really sounds like something she'd do, though she's plenty capable of cracking a computer open on her own. He shivers. It skeeves him out. Even thinking the posters and pictures that were once up on his walls are probably in her creepy stalker memorabilia den.

"You didn't keep in contact with Becky?" Sam asks.

Chuck shudders again. "Hell no. Last I heard she was getting in good with the real witches and- just no. No, I didn't want any of that in my-- she was. Too intense. For me."

Sam looks kinda weird.

"I'll uh. I'll tell you later."

"Tell me what?"

Sam's face screws up and Chuck reads it. Dean would say it's a guilty/constipated look.

"She didn't- she didn't _die??_ " his voice screws up and squeaks again.

"No no. No. She's alive. She's just. Look, I'll explain later," he insists.

And Dean's voice in Chuck's head is irrepressible: _Lookit, it's Little Brother Face number 46: 'I fucked up and I don't want to talk about it because it's awkward please don't make me talk about it oh god please forget I mentioned it.'_

«»

The explosion propelled a table through Chuck's car. It's a scrap heap, now. So Sam drives him back home and hands over the keys when they get there. "I can hotwire something for myself. It's not every day you find a usable car with the keys still in it, though. Just... don't get pulled over," he cautions.

"Right," Chuck accepts the carabiner the car keys are hooked on. He'll have to report his stolen, lease another one, and abandon this at a mall.

Then again. It's a pretty decent, 3-year-old Hyundai. The temptation to just keep it is pretty strong. He'll back into parking spots, from now on, to obscure the plate just a little.

He doesn't invite Sam in, he just trails after.

Sam dumps his bags off on the couch and says, "Wow. Okay."

Yeah.

There really _is_ booze everywhere.

Chuck slumps. He goes to the kitchen for a trash bag, but when he returns, Sam takes it from him.

"I'll do it. You still look pretty wiped out."

Translation: you'll probably sip the first stale beer you're alone in a room with, you desperate fucking junkie.

"Fine, whatever," he hands over the bag and Sam sets to work. He's thorough, too. Not that Chuck ever needed to hide flasks around his house, but Sam found emergency stashes of airplane bottles that Chuck hadn't even remembered were there.

Chuck heads to the fridge, still dehydrated and needing sugar, but Sam appears over the door and just cocks his head. Chuck stands back and lets him grab all the cans and bottles out first.

There end up being two bags and a couple boxes stacked full.

Sam takes all of it, by himself, in one trip, hooking the boxes on his long fingers and dragging the two bags. Chuck assumes he goes to the dumpster with it all, but he doesn't go watch.

He's starting to get... nervous? Is that anxiety? What is that?

It feels like his heart is speeding up. He can't catch his breath. He fumbles to a seat and bends, head close to his knees, insides flipping out.

Sam finds him like that.

"Chuck?" he calls when he comes back to the apartment.

"Hey, Chuck-- oh. Chuck," he crouches next to the chair and his hand is unexpected, warm, overwhelming on the back of Chuck's neck.

Goddamnit.

"Okay. Time to breathe, dude."

He tries. He really tries. He shoves Sam away with a scrabbling hand.

But you don't kick a puppy without consequences. Sam sits back on his heels and looks desperately sorry.

"S'okay. I'm. Just," Chuck reels a hand in front of himself.

"Hey, you're gonna be okay after a while. Your body just needs to adjust. Did it freak you out that I took your stuff? It seems like a big change, I know."

"A waste," Chuck chokes out.

Sam shakes his head. "Not a waste. You don't need it."

It's dawning on him, then, as his eyes skip over the apartment. It's fucking _empty_ in here.

Stray paper, newsprint, a laptop, a dumpy couch. 

He never bothered moving much but his clothes and his glassware and his toaster. He doesn't even have a proper kitchen table here, just two stools at the counter. Both were holding 24-packs a few minutes ago.

He's got nothing.  
Less than nothing.

You clear away all the booze and what is he? An empty husk delivering injury reports and leaving the house occasionally for high school games where maybe a kid is catching the eye of college recruiters.

Booze isn't a hobby or a personality trait but when you rip it away from him, not much is left of actual humanity.

(It's a good thing Dean isn't here. He'd be in line for a ganking. Chuck does not presently qualify as human.)

Sam's eyes follow his line of sight and he puts his hand on Chuck's back.

"Let's go. C'mon."

"Where?"

"Let's drive. Come on, Chuck."

The Winchester solution to all existential crises: Just drive.

«»

Sam asks for a shopping center. Chuck gives him directions, then guzzles more water because Sam says to.

They end up at one of those retail superstores and Chuck just tries to keep up with Sam's long legs until he notices Chuck puffing far behind him and waits up, matching his pace.

Sam gets to the coffee aisle and picks out stuff that looks fancy and stuff that looks easy. Then he turns around and asks a stock clerk where the appliances are.

"Whatcha think?" he asks, when they get to the aisle.

Chuck shrugs. He gets his coffee from... elsewhere. He doesn't really do this crap on his own. He burns gas, drives to a coffee shop, diner, drive-thru, whatever.

Sam looks at some of the boxes, reads the directions. He buys one that doesn't look too complicated, of a recognizable brand. Probably a good quality.

He wanders out of the aisle and turns when he sees forks.

There are plates in all shapes and sizes and cups, opposite.

They stare for a while. Sam looks at him.

Chuck shrugs again. He points to the mugs on clearance.

"Two blue, two yellow?"

"Sure." Chuck picks them up and they head towards the front.

"Filters," Chuck says, in line. "Don't these need filters?"

Sam snaps his fingers and darts off, leaving Chuck to man their space in line, himself.

Just as the cashier starts scanning he jogs back up with a giant sleeve of like 600 filters.

"Jesus," Chuck says. "Got enough there?"

Sam just smiles like whatever.

Okay, then.

Sam asks for one of those huge bags for the whole box and everything and, after he pays, he hands it to Chuck while he stuffs his wallet back in his pocket.

"Happy sobriety day," Sam says, and motions a ta-dah at the bag.

"Huh," he thinks about it. "Okay. Thanks."

"No problem. Um." He seems to chew something over while they walk back out to the parking lot. "I hope it sticks. For you. I mean, it would be good for you."

Chuck doesn't quite know _how_ it's supposed to be good for him. He always figured he was one of those writers who _required_ insobriety to function.

Sam opens the door for him and they push the bag into the back seat. "Oh. Keys are yours again," he hands them over.

Right. Sliding the seat ALL the way up from where Sam was sprawled in it is a treat for both of them. Sam can't help but laugh.

Chuck thinks he might be laughing, too. But this feels like a so-long-good-luck gift. Like, despite what Sam said before, Chuck's welcome to see him, but it probably won't happen. Just like neither Sam nor Dean actually get back around to a lot of their friends.

Friends.

He doesn't exactly warrant the title.

Associates. He's this year's Missouri Moseley.

Sam clears his throat. "Speaking of which, you mind?" he thumbs toward the back of the lot.

Chuck doesn't want to understand what that means.  
But he knows exactly what it means.

He sighs and looks for a car that doesn't look like it belongs to an employee. Looks for something that probably belongs to some asshole who plagues customer service people.

He points at one, and he knows it's not to Sam's usual tastes. It's a truck, for one, and it's newer. But it's also got a fading Bush/Cheney '04 sticker on it.

Sam considers it, then nods definitively.

Chuck has to play look-out. He parks in the next spot and comes out to lean on the hood.

Sam gets the truck unlocked pretty fast then comes around again, glaring at the sticker.

But he gets his bags out of the trunk and checks the front seat for anything he left.

Because he's leaving right now. On to the next one.

"Well," he starts, straightening in front of Chuck.

Chuck's chewing on a thumbnail. He shakes his head and motions for Sam to turn to the side. Sam's taken aback a bit when he starts unzipping his bag and digging through one of the pockets.

Chuck knows exactly what he's looking for. Exactly where Sam would keep such a thing. He comes up with a can of spray paint and shakes it. He walks around the truck, climbs the side and tries to stand out of the wind as he blasts bright red all over the Bush/Cheney sticker.

He hops down, comes back, and hands the can over.

"Now you can drive it."

A smile to rival the fucking sun bursts across Sam's face. He laughs, bright and loud and wonderful. "Yeah. Thanks for that."

Chuck nods, pleased. "Just another service I provide."

Sam jams the can back in his bag and comes back up with a piece of paper, a pen. He scrawls his number across it. Then thinks for a moment. And writes another number.

"I'll pick up either of those," he hands it over. "What's yours?"

He's almost surprised Sam asked. He pulls out his cell phone and- yeah nevermind. It's still dead. Because he never charges it. Because no one ever calls him. Except the occasional newspaper or publisher.

He rips the end off the paper and Sam hands the pen over.

Sam makes him wait, types the number into his phone and something else.

"Charge your damn phone, man. You never know."

"Yeah I do."

"See, that's creepy, when you say that."

He shrugs. "That's why I say that. You're the only one I can fuck with like that."

Sam tosses everything in his bag and shoulders it again. "You say you're not psychic anymore and then-"

"I was never _psychic_. I had fucking alcoholic fever dreams. And. You know. Problem solved, thanks Sam."

"Or thank whoever, for the car wreck. God, I guess."

Chuck snorts. "No."

"No?"

Dammnit. Chuck would actually like to have this conversation. Air his grievances and debate the basis for the religious bullshit they're assaulted by on all sides with someone who knows the actual source of it--

But they're standing next to a nearly-stolen, recently-vandalized truck, in broad daylight, and a very stolen car, which Chuck now kind of owns. And Sam's tall as the trees so they're way conspicuous. And he just wishes.

Well.

Yeah. He wishes Sam would just come back with him and.  
Stay. For a while longer. Not leave him alone to glue his pieces back together.

Sam seems to get it after a long second with no reply.

"Well I guess I'll-"  
"Don't you wanna just-" they say at the same time.

Then both clamp up tight.

Sam jumps in again. "You're not really gonna look us up, are you?"

He... doesn't really know how he'll feel about it once he's alone again.

You know. He's next to a liquor store right now. As soon as Sam has driven off, he could just--

But he won't.

He scuffs the toe of his shoe on the ground. "Why not?" he squints up at Sam. "Are you really gonna pick these numbers up?"

Sam nods like, _well, yeah_.

"So if I'm ever in Lebanon, Kansas?"

"Might wanna call _before_ you're there. We might be. I donno. Anyplace."

"Yeah. Yeah." Wow. What the fuck. Are they having a 'Can I see you again?' conversation here?

"Can I see you again?" bursts out of his mouth before, "Son of a shit, I can't believe I just said that."

Sam doesn't laugh at him, though. He smiles just like he _knows stuff_ and boy, does he ever _know stuff_. "You _will_ see me again," he says, certain. "Charge your fucking phone, Chuck," he says as he heads back around the truck and gets in and starts breaking stuff open to hotwire it.

Chuck doesn't leave until he hears the rumble of the other engine. Sam sends him a thumbs up through the window and Chuck flashes a quick wave. They do that thing where they don't exit at opposite sides of the shopping center so it's like, 'Am I supposed to ignore him until we drive in different directions?'

But then a car merges between them and they lose each other in traffic.

«»

His phone pings after it's been charging for a couple minutes.  
Pings twice.

**Hi.**

and

 **Tell me how the Sumatra coffee is. I wanted to try that one**.

Just to be obliging, Chuck gets the box out of the car and spends all afternoon figuring the machine out and then he makes coffee, on his own, and is pretty ridiculously proud of it.

 **Nope,** he texts back. **You're going to have to come back around and pick this one up I don't like it.**

Sam's **lolololol** in reply is unexpectedly colloquial.  
And it's not the last thing he has to say.

«»

Chuck plucks his glasses off his face and rubs at his eyes.

His hand wanders around for a glass tumbler that isn't next to the keyboard.

He pouts.

Coffee is so much more work.

It's that stream-of-consciousness text, **Beer is a lot less effort than coffee** , which earns him a phone call in reply instead of the usual ping of a message, for the first time in two weeks.

"Uh. Hi."

"Hey," Sam answers, being gentle already because he automatically got the wrong idea.

"That's not to say that I _have beer here_ ," Chuck says, right off the bat.

"Didn't think you did," Sam lies.

Chuck blows out a breath. "I really don't."

"You know, it would be okay if you did. I'd just. Ask you to, like. Throw it away."

"I fucking swear to you, I don't have any alcohol here."

"And I'm not the sobriety police, Chuck! I just. If you feel like you'd rather drink. Can you just... just call me, first?"

Chuck doesn't say anything. He's kind of hung up on the idea that Sam would actually answer a phone just to talk him off the liquor cliff.

He always cares so much.  
Chuck was just being flippant.  
Sam cares more than anyone.  
Ever. About everybody.

"I mean, come on," Sam adds, "a phone call. That's less effort than coffee, right?"

Chuck blinks at this unassailable logic. He's about to ask something but loses it when he hears his name in the background, then again, closer.

"Yeah, it's him," Sam says.

"You little bastard!" Dean shouts at Sam's phone.

"Hold on," Sam says and switches to speaker, everything getting slightly louder, fuzzier.

"Uh, hey, Dean."

"How the hell have you been?" Dean asks, gruff and amused. " _Where_ the hell have you been? We could have used a little goddamn insight here and there but I guess you got no more powers, from what I hear."

"I didn't--" it's like yelling into the wind, but he tries anyway, "I didn't have powers. There were never any. _Powers_ ," he grips his hair and hates his life.

"Oh, it's a reunion," Dean says, a little vague. "Cas is here, too. Say hi to Chuck."

"Um. Hello. Chuck?"

"Yeah. Hey. Hi, Cas."

"Why aren't you dead?"

"Wow, rude!" Dean laughs.

"Oh my god," Sam says.

"I'm just asking," Cas grumbles.

"We'll talk about this later oh my- Stop it. No. Dean, no. Will you guys give me a minute? Seriously."

There's the noise of movement and then the static of air like Sam must have stepped outside.

"I'm sorry about that. I--. I didn't know if I could tell them the details."

"Yeah. Fine. Whatever you want," Chuck says. He doesn't really care, but Sam seems to take it like he's mad.

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "Please don't buy booze, Chuck, you did so much work to get clean."

It kind of was work. He was miserable. He hates pain. And sickness. And suffering.

And Sam, who has been through more of that than pretty much anybody, Sam who got his ass boxed up with Lucifer and popped right back out the other side, is assuring him that his pain was worth it. That he did a good job. With his pathetic little pain.

He couldn't forget that if he wanted to. He could never look at the curve of a brown bottle or the broken wax on a lid ever again without remembering that he stopped this because the guy who saved the world fuckin' _asked him to_.

They're quiet for a while. It's not an uncomfortable silence. It's really nice knowing someone's on the other end of the phone, actually. Even if all he's doing is breathing.

"I'm glad you're not dead," Sam says, to top it off, as if he's not already the kindest person alive.

"You too," Chuck says with a little too much feeling.

Sometimes he really misses writing Sam.

"How is he, by the way? Dean?"

Sam huffs a breath. "I think we're close to something," he sounds suspect rather than hopeful. But that's a good sign. Going into it with doubt is a good thing. "I think we can get rid of the Mark. Cas is positive we can."

Of course he is.  
No power in the universe could really stop Castiel from ensuring that Dean lives.

From what little he's heard, that hasn't diminished since the end. Cas keeps coming back and each time he finds Dean, things get more intense.

They would hate to hear that that's what the story told him. That they both get so tied up in knots around each other, that they're so inevitable that sometimes it's hard not to see them as a single unit already.

"You will," Chuck assures him.

"Got some insight for us, after all?" Sam teases, light.

"Sam. I really wish I did." He's not lying about that. Dean shouldn't have to suffer this way. He should never have had to become something so inhuman. There is nothing more opposite his nature than this.

He'd actually gone back over some of his old scribbled notes. What little he'd kept.

He'd known of Cain and Abel, far down the Winchester family line. But the Mark? He knew nothing of it.

"Well, look," Sam says into the quiet, "We're gonna get back to it. You're okay, right? I probably should have checked in sooner."

Chuck gets up to start making that coffee. "I'm fine. Thanks for... caring."

"Yeah," Sam says. "Hey. Should I text you? Tell you how this all turns out?"

Sam's giving him a choice. He's letting him choose not to get involved at all.

"Yeah. Lemme know," Chuck says.

«»

Chuck moves soon after. He's dumped his stuff into his new apartment and there's a game he could catch in Kansas and he's like... well. Why not?

It might be a little soon after Sam's invitation. But better this than be forgotten about.

So he heads to the game and if they're not home, he'll have to get a motel room for the night and he'll head back, after. But if Sam answers-

First ring, actually.

"Hey."

"Hey. You got a minute?"

"Definitely," the hollow sound of big, thick books being shut in frustration. Or maybe relief.

"I'm in Kansas."

"Oh. Oh- wait. You were moving this week, right?"

"Yeah, I already did that. I'm supposed to get details on this team and write this article. Um. I'll be in Stockton."

Sam laughs. "Wow. That's the dregs."

"Go Tigers," he says with zero enthusiasm. "Save me from bad teen sports. And iffy motels."

"Oh, shit. Yeah, we've got plenty of room here. Are you-" he pauses. Restarts. "Are you sure? I mean. Well. Cas kind of lives here now. And. We're still working the job. I don't-- you shouldn't be uncomfortable."

A motel would be uncomfortable.  
(Losing touch with Sam would be uncomfortable.)

"Dean cooks."

"Um. Sorry? What?"

"Dean cooks. I know he does. He's got access to a full kitchen there, right?"

"Well. Yeah."

"So I've been wondering what that's like."

"What, Winchester family dinner?" Sam asks, mocking.

"I'm serious."

It doesn't take more convincing than that. Sam was just being cautious with him. With his no-supernatural-stuff status.

But he was born into this as much as they were. He may have gotten a reprieve -- one that he still doesn't fully understand -- but that doesn't mean his wonder over the whole thing completely disappeared.

It was a story he wrote, for a long time, assuming that this fantastical shit was just produced from his own mind. Even after, when it turned out he was in the thick of it and didn't want to be, his fascination with it didn't just turn off.

He's a sports writer as a matter of convenience, right now. He can do it -- he's always been able to do it -- and he makes money with it. He was never passionate about sports like his family, but, in trying to connect with them, he learned all he could. It lead to an objective appreciation, but not ever a hometown-team enthusiasm.

It's the fantasy, the drama, the horror stuff that gets him. It really does. It still draws him in. The threat of a sweeping apocalypse. The ways people weave together or pull apart in that kind of end-of-world crisis. That's not a book he can put down.

Sam's directions are to an actual bunker at the top of a low hill. A retired power plant structure of some kind cloaks it from the outside world, even from the few surrounding neighbors.

Cas waits outside with Sam. His samey, cartoony look is slightly different. His jacket shorter, his tie a new pattern. Not the same exact Cas as always.

And his face is a little more expressive. Chuck can see that instantly. He's lived in it a long while, now. It's more connected with him.

The hum, the level at which angelic grace tunes in on, never really left Chuck.

Whenever he felt grace ringing out, he ran for the hills. He didn't want to be near _any_ of them ever again if he could help it.

Cas's grace is there, but it's toned way down. It's centralized directly on him. It doesn't blast out to the size of his true form. He's tucked it around him, more respectful of the borders of his vessel.

Chuck's still not wild about being in the same room with him.

But it turns out Cas has just become an okay guy.

There's a big slap on the back from Dean as he trips down the last stair, into the main room.

And instead of telling him that Chuck had been looking forward to his cooking, Sam had graciously told Dean that Chuck had a bet that Dean could burn boiling water just making the attempt. So he outdid himself.

But the Mark is clearly still taking its toll.

Dean wasn't all that interested in eating the dinner he'd so carefully crafted, and after he disappeared from the table, Cas tried (and failed) to wait an appropriate amount of time to follow after and check on him.

Sam looks really worried.  
He should be.

Chuck shoves aside his plate, practically licked clean, and sips the coffee they offered him. He observes Sam. He stares. Until Sam starts breaking it down, like he does.

He whispers how lost he is. How lost the three of them feel because of this stupid Mark.

He details what he didn't, before, when they'd first bumped into each other. How Cas was dying but he's back. And Dean had to kill Cain but, somehow, he's still hanging on inside of himself.

Cas and Sam are terrified for him.

"God," Sam says, head in his hands. "I'm just dumping this on you. You didn't need this shit."

"What's it hurt for me to listen, Sam? It's no big deal," he assures him, always quiet. Just in case.

Sam keeps his head propped on a hand but turns to look at him. "You act like a spaz a lot but you listen. And you say things people need to hear."

Chuck hasn't felt that useful. If anything Sam's been the one actively helping.

Chuck tries a little harder.

"You know... how much space there is in your brother?" he asks. "And in you, too, for that matter, but Dean's never had it occupied."

"Space?"

"The whole expandable border of you, as a vessel," Chuck explains. "You know how much of you was taken over when... when Lucifer stepped in." They'd never discussed it, but Chuck knows that Sam knows this. Because he saw it happen. He saw Stull. "When he was there, you didn't even realize there was _that much_ of yourself that could be occupied."

Sam is very still.

"There's that much room in Dean, too. And now. You know, demons? They fit in everybody. They don't need that much room. But angels? _Archangels?_ They had to tailor you guys to all that you'd need to contain. So it's," he throws out his hands, "it's a ballroom in your fucking spirit, right? It's Versailles in there. Because Lucifer had to walk around in you. And Michael had to walk around in Dean."

Sam absorbs this. His eyes move sightlessly back and forth. Thinking.

"But you guys don't actually need all that extra room and you just-- you filled it anyway. Sam, you filled it with the whole world. You took all that care. All that give-a-shit. And you were full to the brim with it before Lucifer ever even--" he pauses. "Before Ruby even let him out."

Sam's eyes refocus on him. Which is what he wanted.

"You saved the world because you've always made room in yourself for _everybody_. For all of us, the whole world. And so has Dean. I mean, that's why he's so..."

"Dean," Sam breathes, as if the name were a definition in itself. But not the one typically accepted. The one that raised Sam. Clothed and fed him, walked him to school and made sure he graduated. Stuck up for him and protected him and loved him too much.

"Yeah. Yeah. That's why he _is_ humanity. That's why he loves us all, too. Even if he doesn't act like it. Or," Chuck sighs, "loves them one at a time. In gross detail."

Sam smirks.

"Anyway. I'm saying there's too much room in there. The Mark can't infect the whole thing. It's too big. Too big, even, for a Knight of Hell. It's just. It's not gonna happen, Sam. He'll be fine. You and Cas? You'll make him fine. But until then, you have to know that he's got that within himself. He resisted Michael. Nobody thought that would last. Destiny took root around that idea and built the whole future on it and that just," mimes an explosion. "It just didn't happen."

Sam thinks for a while.

Chuck drinks the coffee and eyes the half-empty beer Dean left in front of his plate.

Sam narrows his eyes at him.

"What?"

"Thanks."

Chuck crosses his arms and shrugs. "No problem."

Sam stands and dumps the dregs of the beer in the sink. He comes back around to the table, stacking plates. Chuck helps a little but Sam waves him off. "You gonna stay here tonight?"

"Assuming it's free, you're my best option."

"Ha. Yeah." Sam shows him around and there's not much to it. A bed to borrow and a huge room with showers. There are other levels, but Chuck isn't much interested. Sam is enthusiastic about the library but.

Lore books. Academic stuff.

Chuck's never been a fan of academia. It requires so much... fact-checking. It's not lazy-people reading.

When Sam leaves him in one of the empty rooms, to sleep, Cas soon emerges to fill the void.

As Chuck knew he would.  
He could feel him waiting.

"Cas," he greets without turning around from where he's rifling through his bag.

"Chuck."

"What can I _not_ do for you? 'Cause you know I can't do anything, right?" He finally turns around.

Cas doesn't seem so sure about that.

Chuck sits on the bed and checks his phone, though the only person who'd really be texting him is the one whose bunker he's in.

"I just wondered if you'd allow me to check something."

Hm. Yeah. That.

Chuck isn't curious at all about what he's looking for or what he won't find.

But he nods.

"Sam said you were in a car accident."

"I crashed. I was drunk. I crashed my car and I almost died."

"You were revived."

"Yeah."

Cas nods.

He extends his hand. "May I?"

Chuck doesn't give it much thought. He leans forward. Cas puts two fingers to his head and there's the thinnest thread. The barest hint that Cas is in his head, searching.

It must be as fruitless as Chuck's own inner inquiries. He pulls back with a slight look of resignation.

"I appreciate your..." he trails off.

"No, yeah. Sure. No big deal."

"Um. Sleep well. And. Thank you for asking to come. Sam was glad to hear that you were interested at all."

"Oh." That's cool.

Cas turns back to leave.

"You um," he stops him. "You know Dean's gonna- it'll work out. You believe that, Cas. I know you do."

Cas is quiet. "What little I still believe in sleeps in this home. I do believe that, yes. We can do this."

"Good," Chuck says. "Somebody's gotta keep saying it."

«»

His visit isn't long. He has to go work, anyway. And then settle into the new apartment.

Sam calls and says he missed Charlie by just a day. She sounds pretty cool. It's about time they had a consistent, out, queer presence in their midst. It should help demystify Dean's situation, at least. In theory. His whole self-denial thing was exhausting years ago and it seems like his dance with Cas just keeps rolling on.

Sam actually pours a whole lot out on the phone over the next few weeks. He keeps trying to catch Chuck up on everything. He hops all over his personal timeline so it can be kind of convoluted. But at least some of the cases he and Dean have been on spark an itch in Chuck. He outlines short stories he's sure he'll never actually write.

It's better than nothing, anyway.  
Every unfinished sentence is better than nothing.  
The whole situation is better than nothing. Even without the booze.

He can keep up with Sam. Knows his pace and the pathways in his brain, the way that subjects connect when, seemingly, he's just following bursts of knowledge and memory.

He finally has someone to socialize with.

That's exhausting sometimes. But over the phone, not so bad.

He's very worried that will change when he answers his door in his robe on a Wednesday morning.

"Hi. Bad time?" Sam asks.

"Uhhhh." It takes him a while to process. He's been awake maybe four minutes.

"I mean, if you're busy I can just-"

"Stop talking," Chuck orders. He can't handle the talking right now. He turns and leaves the door open and just walks back to the kitchen.

He hears Sam follow and close the door. Set his bags next to the couch and shift from foot to foot while Chuck threatens the machine with a beating if it doesn't fucking make coffee right fucking now.

"Be nice to it, it's only trying to help."

Chuck does not deign to respond. He stares into his empty mug.

"I like this couch better. And you've finally got a kitchen table. Sort of."

It's a very small table with only one chair. It's very sort-of.

The machine is being so uncooperative.

"Chuck," Sam pipes up again. "Go put some goddamn clothes on. It'll be faster if we just go buy some."

Chuck squints over his shoulder at Sam. Sam gives him a kind of _Well, are you gonna get your ass in gear?_ look.

He's not going anywhere. Chuck doesn't know why he's here. He hopes to fuck there's not a werewolf nearby because he heard what he could've sworn was a ripping growl last night and the woods aren't that far off and-

He shrugs. And goes to put pants on.

«»

Mercifully, Sam restrains the cheerful babble until they call his name and hand over their coffees. They've got a while yet to wait on the breakfast sandwiches, but Chuck will live if he sucks half of his drink down right now.

When he's able to tune in, Sam's talking about movies. Movies that Chuck would actually care to see. And some sort of exhibit at the museum in Colorado Springs. That's not too far. And he doesn't mention a hunt not once.

Suddenly, he's fed, he's back in Sam's recently-stolen Pontiac, and they're driving to go do stuff.

They're hanging out.

He interrupts Sam talking something-something climate change something-something and he's like, "Hang on a second."

Sam looks away from the road to quirk an eyebrow at him, briefly.

Chuck thinks for a second. He hasn't just _gone out_ into the world to _see stuff_ with people in.... shit. Years.

All the games he goes to, those don't count. He's at a live event, at a college or high school or professional game, and there are people surrounding him. But more often than not he's just drinking and taking notes and he doesn't have to say much except when his ticket's at will-call.

"Thanks," he finally says.

"No problem. You looked like you could use an airing out," Sam says, wry.

"Were you just. Like. Stopping by? On your way back home?"

Sam frowns, "Well, not really. It's just. Dean wanted-- I shit you not, I'm not even making this up: Dean wanted to go on a 'cheese crawl' in Wisconsin. It's like a regional tour of, um. Like, home-brewed beer and cheeses from independent farms and stuff? And so. I donno. We're just grabbing a couple days off. I figured-- I figured I'd come see if you were doing anything. You didn't have any deadlines or something today?"

Chuck shakes his head.

"'Cause if you had something-"

"I think I should. I mean. I think you're right. I guess I don't really just," he shrugs. "Do stuff. With anybody."

"Well," Sam says. "You should. People should wanna hang out with you, Chuck."

"Well, when you say it that way, it sounds exhausting."

Sam rolls his eyes.

«»

They have lunch together again, once, when Sam and Dean pass through the state on their way back from a hunt. And then he doesn't even get a text from Sam for eight days.

He's got the television off. The whole apartment's dark and he should finally get some sleep. But he's sitting there on the couch with his foot up on the coffee table, his knee swaying, zoning out, looking through messages on his phone.

A lot can happen to a hunter in eight days.

He considers it a long, quiet while before he concludes that, yes, he is actually concerned that something happened to them.

This should, technically, always be a concern.

If something happens to the Winchesters- if something _permanent_ and _mortal_ happens to the Winchesters? It's like when the power went down at Jurassic Park. Pretty soon the monsters are gonna realize the fences aren't electrified anymore and all hell will break loose.

Just, you know. In the literal sense of the phrase.

If he sends one text out into the quiet nothingness, there's a chance it won't even go to the phone Sam's using this week. Really, maybe he had to dump all his phones and start fresh. Maybe he lost Chuck's number.

He chews on that thought. Gets up and goes to bed. He plugs the phone in and leaves it on the side table.

He's tired. He should just drop off.

He wakes the phone up and opens a text.

**On the off chance that you're tied up for the thousandth time plz attempt to respond to this text by typing with your nose or toes until you get access to a knife.**

Not much more he can do but hope for a--

The phone rings.

"Hi."

"Hi. I'm not tied up. I mean, not literally. But kind of with this whole. Situation."

"Ah. No biggie. Just making sure you're not being digested."

Sam laughs. "Thanks. Seriously, though. I'll have to- I mean, I'd talk, but-"

"You're busy. I get it. I was checking. I'm going to sleep now, anyway, so go about your creepy business."

"It's not creepy. It's actually a lot less creepy than it has been lately."

"Good. Then go about your still-extremely-creepy business. Because it's probably still very creepy," Chuck blinks into the dark, not even sure what's coming out of his mouth. But it makes Sam laugh again. "Hanging up now."

"Yeah. Bye."

The phone rings again two minutes later.

"I mean, it's good news. Tentatively. Kinda don't wanna jinx it."

"If anybody could jinx good news," Chuck doesn't have to say it.

"Yeah. I know. Um. But I wanna talk to you, so. I'll call in-- I'll call the next time I get a chance."

Chuck yawns, "No pressure."

"Yeah, but," Sam sounds that mix of anxious and excited and still kind of doubtful and, whatever it is, he should get a better grip on it before Chuck goes on making social demands of him. Like, who is he to force a conversation, anyway? He can barely tolerate socialization.

Sam's quiet. Tense.  
He can't wrap his words around it.  
He really wants to tell someone.

And, "I really want to talk to you," he says again.

Geeze. It's so easy to like Sam.

Chuck yawns some more. "Look, I'm getting some sleep. Maybe you should, too. Maybe things will be more... concrete, or whatever, in the morning."

"Yeah, I donno about it being that soon."

"Sam. You don't have to talk in riddles. I'll talk to you when I talk to you. Okay?"

"Okay. Okay," he can see Sam nod in his head. See his smile. "I'll call. 'Night, Chuck."

"'Night S-- goodnight, Sam."

He just barely stopped himself from stepping over that thin, faint line. But it would not have done to end that conversation by calling him 'Sammy.' That's not something Chuck would be allowed to do.

That's not something they do.

«»

By the time Sam does call, it's a total relief. There's a line of tension that Chuck didn't know had been strung tight through him. It snaps at the sound of the phone finally ringing.

He tried not to be curious. He tried.

But he got the feeling it was something big. Something good. Something like

"So, we did it," Sam says, when he picks up, smile completely audible, cheer soaring through the fucking roof. "We got rid of the Mark."

His story involves a lot of "so fucking awesome"s and "kicked it in the ass"s and a surprising amount of "I wish you'd seen"s and "you should have been there"s.

Contrary to his behavior with regards to Sam (and the monster-of-the-week plots that have been popping into his head in the last few months), Chuck does not at all want to have been there, on the spot, in the blood and chaos and carnage. He's fine over here in the peanut gallery.

Sam is so thrilled, though, so proud of his brother and impressed with Cas and relieved and relaxed, that he wouldn't much mind being there for the cleanup. To bask, for once, in a solid victory over evil with the...

Well. Once upon a time he wished, very much to write them into mild endings, riding into the sunset, trucking on, living without lingering dread and encompassing fear.

It would be nice to share that with them. A long time ago there was a sort of "Oh, my boys" fondness he felt for them.

The reality of the matter, however, is that his place is here, listening. Not injecting his flat character into the story.

Sam concludes the tale with a sigh. And one more: "Wish you were there, man. It was amazing."

«»

Dean's recovery takes a while and, as they do, Sam and Dean eventually drive each other nuts by hovering too close.

Cas recruits Charlie into sticking around for a while and helping him with Dean.

Her first order of business is gently but firmly shoving Dean out the fucking door and into the light of day to rejoin humanity.

And Cas trails along.  
As he does.

 **Anything happening in Colorado?** Sam fishes a few days later.

 **Bored?** Chuck guesses.

**Maybe I should go on vacation too. Cas Dean Charlie headed east. I should go west?**

**When u get to the beach pour a cerveza out for me.**

**no :(**

Chuck's phone follows up the text with a ring. That's a neat trick. All he has to do is imply that beer exists somewhere in the world and Sam will call.

"You'd be a great sponsor if this were actually a program," Chuck commends when he answers.

Sam sputters for a second. "I was calling to find out what you're doing this week."

"Nice recovery. I've got draft picks to cover this week and some guy wants me to contribute to his website. I'm not gonna say yes unless he's got something to pay me, though," Chuck sets his glasses aside and tries not to answer the call of the respondent conditioning that makes him want to get up and turn the coffee pot on. He's already had a fuckload and he's wired. Truth be told, he's pounded out four pieces to sell the guy once he decides to stop dicking around and start paying his writers decently. They're real good debate pieces, too, it will really get the assholes in the forums riled up.

Chuck has learned very well how to piss off fanboys. Fantasy football fanboys are no different.

"Think you can write about draft picks from the car? Or the beach?" Sam asks.

"Fuck the beach. Ew. Do I fucking look like I go to beaches?"

"Wow. Sorry. I was just asking."

Oof. He wishes he hadn't just let loose on his kneejerk reaction. "No. I mean. Shit. Sorry. I know it's _the beach_ and all. But. Sharks, man."

Sam outright laughs at him. " _Sharks?_ "

"And the water is gross! There's mercury and wastewater runoff and fish fart in it so, whatever." He puts his head in his hand. "Yeah. Sorry. Not a beach guy. And I don't tan. I've never tanned in my life. I have two settings: raw and scorched."

Sam is still gasping laughing. "Fish fart in it, I'm-- I can't fucking believe you."

"ANYWAY," Chuck talks over his hysterics, "yeah, you enjoy that."

"Oh my god, now I can't get that image out of my head, what the _hell_ is wrong with you?"

"You don't think the entire ocean is one giant fish toilet?! Think about it, Sam, animals shit on land, of course they shit in the sea. I mean, WE dump things in the sea and so it's probably doubly toxic with them eating our- look it up, it's called the North Pacific Trash Gyre or something. And if the sea things are eating our toxic trash, then--"

"Toxic fish farts??" Sam drops the phone laughing.

"Oh my holy fuck," Chuck shifts in his chair, pulls up Google, and sends the link to Sam.

"I think I broke my phone," Sam says when he gets back on.

"Look in your email."

"How do you know my email...," Sam trails off

"Finish asking me that question. Would you like me to recite a _list_ of your email addresses?" Chuck challenges.

"Right. Nevermind."

"Open the fucking link-"

"Great Pacific garbage patch," Sam reads aloud, skimming, "... pelagic plastics, chemical sludge,... one of the highest levels known of plastic particulate suspended in the upper water column... okay, hold on," he keeps reading, only the occasional word said aloud when he's really grossed out, and then there's the sound of typing, clicking links.

"Oh my god, this is gross," he says all of a sudden.

"I told you."

"Now I'm Googling 'do fish fart,'" Sam says and, moments later. "Fish _do_ fart."

"I fucking told you."

"I'm sending you a link. Hold on. Wait, turn on your chat thingy."

So, long story short, Sam spends his week off descending through the Wikipedia black hole, which leads to the YouTube black hole, which leads to trolling the forums after Chuck's first article is posted on the website.

They get very used to the sound of one chewing cereal over the phone while the other reads Cracked articles and comment rants aloud.

By all reports, Dean comes back burned, Cas comes back tanned to an otherworldly perfection, and Charlie pet every dog on the beach.

"And what did you tell them about what you did all week?" Chuck asks as he sends another awful clickbait link.

"Um," he can almost _feel_ Sam looking over either shoulder from where he's still lounged in the library, the same place he's been since last Monday. "I'm gonna tell them I hung out with you."

"That's very adult of you, Sam."

«»

Sam and Dean are on a hunt in Tennessee this week.

Chuck knows this because Sam called to tell him so.

Kind of like how he called to tell him they were near the Canadian border last week. And worryingly close to maybe actually having to step foot in Arizona the week before that.

He doesn't quite understand why he's suddenly subscribed to the Winchester newsletter but he might have broken Sam by slipping through the internet K-hole and consuming his vacation week with blogging shenanigans.

"I haven't seen you in a while," Sam says after announcing their location.

"I'm still in one piece," Chuck assures him, lying through his teeth, watching his tremoring hands and wondering why this is happening _months_ after the fact.

"We haven't been near Colorado, or-- well, I mean I guess Kansas _is_ near Colorado, but, I just. I haven't gone."

"Not much to see," Chuck shivers and heads for his bedroom, wrapping himself up and trying to think of a way to get off the phone so he can fall apart in blessed silence.

His voice may give him away, or it could just be Sam's natural self-flagellation. "I should have just driven over there when I had the time to. I mean. We could have done _something_ other than screwing around on the internet."

Yes.  
Yes, of course.

Because he really needs to think about "we" and "screwing" in the same sentence when he's suddenly deteriorating in the dark of his home, imagining Sam coming to sweep up his broken bits. Fucking fantasizing about Sam tucking him in and getting him fed and making sure he still breathes through the night.

Having exotic fucking delusions about someone _caring_.  
Being there in the morning.  
Noticing the difference if he crawled outside to the 7-11 and just guzzled a sixer of Corona.

What if, though.  
What if.

"Yeah you should. You should come. I'd like that," he confesses, teeth almost clacking by the end. He's shuddering and he wants to sleep. He wants for this ghost of the detox to fade as he just hibernates.

But Sam sounds brighter on the other end. And if the sun shines on Sam Winchester somewhere, it will come back out over Chuck's little hovel eventually. Even if he just drags it with him when he finally shows up in town.

"It seems to be one job after another, lately, but if you're cool with it, I'll let you know when," Sam says.

When Chuck wakes up, a whole 16 hours later, he feels wrung-out. He aches.

One text message.

**Laramie WY :D**

Because Sam is a great guy who gets excited about a 220-mile proximity, even if there will probably be another case, and then another case after that.

«»

Chuck bursts out of the downtown publishing office and gets strange looks as he staggers up two flights of the parking garage to his car.

He loosens his tie and his hands shake as he tries to get the key into the door and he's sweating and the few people who pass must think he's just failed on some massive business deal. One guy smirks and straightens his thousand-dollar jacket and marches off with his head held high, his latte still sitting on top of his Jaguar.

Chuck's gonna remember that moment in a lighter mood and write it into a story. But this very moment, he doesn't know what else to do than scroll down on his phone and dial Sam.

"Hey, Chuck," his voice is clipped but not unhappy. A door closes in the background. An image bolts through Chuck's mind of Dean smirking on the other side of it. He rubs the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

"Hey," his voice is strained but that's nothing unusual, really. "Um. Got a minute?"

"Yeah," low and serious. Sam immediately picks up on the shake in Chuck's voice. "Are you okay?"

"Um. I'll uh. That's actually why I was calling."

Sam's voice drops low. "Headache?"

"Mayb-- yeah. Yeah. And then some," he loops his arm through the steering wheel, rests his head down, rubs at his temples now.

"Chuck, do you need me?"

His heart constricts. Like a wire wraps around it. He doesn't want to think about Sam _needing to feel needed_. Of all the awful things in the world for this sweet, generous son of a bitch to always be clamoring for a chance to fix people? It's fucking heartbreaking to think about. He doesn't wanna turn this into that. He was just calling because--

"You can say it, Chuck. We're just forty minutes out from you today," Sam soothes. He doesn't have to. He thinks Chuck's having some sort of relapse event and that's not- Chuck heaves a breath in, forces away the tiny gasps he was taking.

"It's okay. I just- it's not that," he restarts. "It's something else. Um. I think you guys should m-make your way over here. The next time you get a chance," he aims for the verbal equivalent of a shrug and misses by about a continent.

"Okaaay," Sam draws out, suspicious. "What do you mean?"

The air all blows out of him at once. " _This. Fucking. Building_ ," he hisses. "Sam, I haven't been this creeped out in _YEARS_. Cold spots everywhere. Sinister red eyes in the corner of your vision, frost on the windows in the middle of fucking _May!_ " His voice spins out on him, high-pitched, and he has to clear his throat. "I've never hunted one down, okay? But I know how to tell a poltergeist from just _feeling it_ , I mean, _jesus_ I've never felt it FIRST HAND, though, you know? I just. My head. My fucking ELBOWS AND KNEES are cold, Sam, what even THE FUCK IS THAT??"

"Okay, alright, okay," Sam takes a breath. "Calm down, stay with me, Chuck. In fact-- take a breath for me?"

Chuck closes his eyes and inhales-two-three-four-five, exhales-two-three-four-and the last count is lost on him. He was in a nice suit to sell himself and his stupid little writing and shake hands and make nice and he freaked _the fuck out_ when he first started getting that vibe. Cold sweat sticking his ironed shirt to his back and that eerie _awareness_ creeping up the back of his skull. A smell he can't put a name to. A fritzing light in an office down the hall from where he sat waiting in the lobby.

A full-body shudder wracks him.

"Good. Okay, good," Sam tries to sound a little lighter. "You got the Ghostbusters on speed-dial, though, so you're fine, alright?"

Chuck nods and he knows Sam knows it.

"Right, so, good. So which building are we talking about?"

He flings out a hand and grabs the printed Google Maps page, reads off of it.

"You're still there now?"

"Parked next door. I'm in my car, I can't- I don't know if I can-"

_Calm hands on an easy bourbon buzz, confident and sliding expertly across the steering wheel. Nerves completely calm as he changes lanes to pass safely by some loser who got pulled over for speeding._

"Shit, I could use a drink," he mumbles.

"No."

"Yeah, I know," he says louder, sour.

"Do you wanna wait there? We can pick you up."

Chuck waves a hand around. "No. No, I'll get my shit together. I just. I just need a minute," his voice strains again.

"Okay. Well, maybe if we're all wrapped up here, today, we can be there by tomorrow. In fact- hey hold on."

There's a shuffling on the other end, voices in the background. Sam's fingers over the phone to mute it.

He thinks of Sam's hands a lot. How huge they are, how engulfing. Probably those huge tablet-sized phones work perfectly for him. How does Sam text on tiny phones with his big fingers? He probably--

"Hey, Chuck? We're gonna send Cas out ahead of us. Can you meet him somewhere close by and explain what you saw?"

Cas.

He knows Cas is one of the good guys. He accepts that now.  
Yeah. It's still just teeth-grinding sometimes. Still an adjustment.

"I can, um. I need to eat, I think."

"That's a good idea. Pick someplace and Cas'll meet you there. You know, walk it off, get some sugar and protein. Then you can go home, alright? We'll take care of it."

It's then that Chuck finally slumps in relief. His head hits the wheel and beeps the horn once, quick.

"Thank you."

"Yeah, man. Of course," he can hear Sam's small smile. "But you're alright, right? It was just the ghost that spooked you, it didn't- I mean. The headache wasn't," he stutters slightly, "because you. Uh. Because you need-"

"It's fine. You're right. I just need. Food. Or whatever. I'm- Sam, I'm gonna go now."

"Yeah, sure. Cas will call, 'kay?"

"Sure. Yes."

"Good," Sam's supposed to hang up now, back in business mode. But he hesitates- "Um. Bye, Chuck. I'll see you soon?"

Chuck's quiet for a moment. "You'll find me very fucking far away from downtown. Yeah. I mean, if you stop by."

"Okay. See you in a day, maybe."

"Bye, Sam."

"Bye."

It's very quiet in the car for long minutes after he hangs up. Only the muffled swoosh of cars spiraling down the floors of the garage to exit.

He should have....

Maybe he should be trying to be more _friendly_ with Sam. He's fucking this up, right? He's not calling enough or chatting enough or inviting Sam over. Like, shit. He just called him up because he needs him to hunt for him. He's practically _using_ Sam and his brother.

Chuck scrubs his fingers into his scalp for a second. Whatever in his freaked-out head really constitutes a headache will actually be abated by food and hydration. He'll be fine. He is NOT losing it. His hands will stop shaking. This has to go away sometime. He hasn't had booze in-

He will not count the time since Sam got him sober.

He's got other problems to focus on.

He can really -- like _really_ , really -- see Sam in his life. He could use the occasional company.

He likes Sam.

Geeze. He really likes Sam. As far as humans go, you really don't get much better than him. Chuck knows too much, though. He knows the whole scope. Sam's deeds and misdeeds and hopes and dreams and motivations. At least as far as they stood up until Lucifer stepped inside and took over.

He knows most of Sam's life. He doesn't know the recent stuff. He wants to know what's changed. He wants somebody to be Sam's fucking friend. And if no one else will step up, it's kinda on Chuck to fill the void.

Sam already cares so _deeply_ and Chuck doesn't deserve it so- he takes a deep breath. He'll have to fake it 'till he makes it. Until Sam has enough stability in his life to move beyond his tiny family and build his own. Make friends and find a home.

Chuck's not doing anything else in his free time, really. He can be a stepping stone if that's all he is to Sam. It can't hurt more than detoxing.

He sifts through the junk on the passenger seat and finds his charger. There's a pizza place nearby, he can get a booth by the wall, next to an outlet. The phone's about to die and he'll have to tell Cas where he is.

Cas doesn't call.

Sam's number lights up the screen just when there's searing molten cheese burning the roof of his mouth.

"Ow. Hi."

"Ow?"

"I'm only human," he whines, "and... accident-prone."

"Well, where are you causing accidents at the moment? I'm six minutes from downtown."

Chuck tells him the cross streets. "No Cas? Not that I'm complaining."

"Nah," Sam says, his antenna up again, "I think something's up with Dean and Cas."

Chuck snorts. "And how."

"What?"

"Hang up and drive."

"Order food for me?"

"Tch, _no_ ," Chuck hangs up. Then wipes off his hands and rolls his eyes at himself. He knows exactly which slice Sam would go for. He's got enough in his wallet. He slides his own plate aside and lets it cool while he gets up.

They call Sam's order number as soon as he pokes his head through the door.

"That's you," Chuck points.

"Oh, dude," Sam leaves his bag in the booth opposite.

He's in his FBI suit.

He needs a haircut. (But what else is new?)

"You get the award for best witness," Sam proclaims when he sits back down. "I know you won't look at me like I'm crazy when I talk about cold spots _and_ you bought me pizza."

"Least I can do when I know I'm sending you into a death trap."

" _Somebody's_ death trap, but not ours. And no one else's if you caught it in time," he attempts not to talk with his mouth full but he was raised by a guy who talks with his mouth full. "You less freaked out? Gonna go back in with me?"

Chuck laughs, desperate-nervous, "Hell no," and the ice in the water cup jitters in his hand when he raises it.

Sam's eyes narrow and Chuck tries not to let it bother him that he really is being observed like a witness. "What did you mean about Dean and Cas?" he suddenly veers off.

"There's a lot I don't wanna know about those two," Chuck settles back. "Why, how far have they gotten?"

"How far?"

"I mean, look. You gotta understand how hard it was not to write them as a couple when I knew that's the direction it was headed in. You know, you give 'em just enough--" Chuck holds his fingers up, close, "--to push the sexual tension. You don't wanna make it seem like a sure thing. That's why the audience comes back for more. The whole will-they-won't-they, sweet anticipation thing."

Sam's chewing slows.  
And stops.

"I'm... making a connection here... that I didn't exactly want to make right at this moment?"

Chuck nods. "Yeah, probably best not to think about it."

"Are you-- Did they?" the other half of Sam's big pizza slice falls to the plate. "Did they just send me out of town so--!"

"So they could bone down in your motel room and meet us in the morning?" Chuck shrugs. "I donno. Maybe. They might still be at the cuddling stage. Dean's character definitely implied a lot of unsure, pre-relationship cuddling."

Sam puts his hands in the air almost like he's gonna cover his ears. Then his hands drop.

"Holy shit. Jesus. I'm--" he pauses for a moment to assess. "I'm happy for them, of course."

"I'm not saying it's happened yet, but-"

"Yeah, no. I mean, that's. That makes sense. It does. And I guess," Sam blows the hair out of his face, wipes his hands with a napkin and goes about polishing off the pizza. "Maybe I should give them some space. Looking back on it, I guess they've been throwing me hints for a few days, now. Maybe a couple weeks. I just..." he trails off again to unwanted images, piecing themselves together before his eyes.

He's either going to go into full-time family counseling mode, or attempt to somehow physically burn a rather intense set of images out of his mind, so Chuck changes the subject.

"Maybe you shouldn't go into the building by yourself. Research first?"

"Uh," Sam shakes his head back together. "Tell me what happened and I'll go from there."

«»

They walk to the downtown library and dig up the history of the building. A smaller structure used to stand in its place, a bank, with a seriously warped and corrupt company of men who slaughtered other people to dig for gold on their land.

When the old one burned down, the current-day building was funded with literal blood money.

"I hate this," Chuck mutters for the fifth time.

"Yeah, you said that."

"No, I mean this building is haunted, too," he reads from the pamphlet he picked up, "'a friendly librarian who never wanted to leave his collection is said to roam the children's books in the basement.'"

"Denver's an old city, Chuck. If he starts eating kids, we'll gank his ass, too."

Chuck slides his chair closer to Sam's and tries not to wig out any more than he is. It's true what Sam said, earlier. He's got a professional on call. Sam wouldn't get his ass kicked by a _librarian's_ spirit. He would find that to be flat-out embarrassing.

He reads over Sam's arm and makes a connection he doesn't want to make.

"The mining wasn't done anywhere near here."

"Yep," Sam cringes.

"They brought them to Denver to convince them to sell and when they didn't-"

"Yep."

"Oh, man."

"The boiler room, looks like."

"It's always the fucking boiler room. Or the 13th floor. Why does no one murder on the roof? Or in the break room? Or the atrium?"

"You ever think it's the other way around?" Sam wonders. "Maybe those places aren't the break room or the boardroom or the HR floor _because_ nobody got murdered there?"

"Do I wanna know what they did in the boiler room?"

"Based on tax records and this journal from an outside accountant, I'm thinking you're better off not hearing about it."

"Why now, though?"

Sam starts closing books. Two piles: one to put back, one to check out. "The internet will have to tell us that. Maybe someone's selling the building or something. Come on. I need to get our motel before Dean gets into town. We'll do the questioning tomorrow."

If he waits to do the questioning with Dean, they'll also be waiting until night to break into the building and confront the spirit.

Chuck's not as eager to get home and get away from downtown as he had been earlier.

The ghost that was really riding his ass is nowhere to be seen at the moment: his whole body was crying out for him to just give in and get back on the booze. But with Sam here, he's occupied, distracted, caught up in the story- the case. And his hands aren't shaking. Even if the building freaked him out, he's solid, now.

Maybe his brain thinks Sam wouldn't let him slip.

He drives to a motel that he knows of in a rough part of town. Sam follows in his own car.

"I just realized," he says when he gets out and they walk to the front desk, "you could be plotting out your own story here."

"Yeah. Because that's just what I wanted out of life. It wasn't enough to _use_ you to hunt a ghost, I also intended to play out my very own fanfic," Chuck crosses his arms over his chest and glares. "You might as well call it a trap and accuse me of setting you up."

Sam puts his hands up, car keys jingling, "Sorry. That was stupid."

Sam gets rooms for himself and Dean and Cas. He considers the keys when they're in his hands. He keeps the single for himself and pockets the double for them.

"Subtle," Chuck says.

"Well, they aren't."

"Now that I told you what's up."

"Now that you told me what's up, yeah."

They cross the parking lot and Sam shoulders into his room, drops his bag on the floor and pulls out his laptop. He hands it over to Chuck. "Google News. Search for property sales and search the building name. The company."

"Sure, yeah," he knows how this works.

Sam comes back with the rest of the bags from his car. They crowd the small kitchenette table with research and Chuck is not at all surprised with himself when there's a knock on the door and he looks up and it's 3 a.m.

What Sam calls case research is what Chuck used to call writing research. He often had to puzzle together the pieces that his nightmare-visions gave him, filling in the blanks and details where appropriate with the same kind of investigating that the Winchesters might do, themselves.

It feels good, piecing this together. His fingers flex on the keyboard when Sam has him look something else up. For the first time in a long time, he aches to write. To find his own story to construct, bit by bit. Some little tale of horror.

(He's gotta come up with new main characters, maybe.)

It's Dean and Cas at the door. When Sam tosses Dean the key to the other room, Dean suddenly does a double-take at the single bed, across the room.

Then, conspicuously, he doesn't comment. He sends Cas to go unload their bags.

Castiel comes in with McDonalds sacks first, then takes the Impala's keys from Dean.

"Don't let Dean touch my fries," he says on the way out.

That's the first bag Dean goes for, of course. Sam only rolls his eyes, but Chuck snatches the bag.

"What?" Dean says with his mouth full. "He doesn't even _need_ to eat."

"That's not how we treat our boyfriends, Dean," Chuck says in his best mom voice and shoves the bag across the table. Sam chokes and tries not to laugh but he fucking laughs and Dean shuts up and sits on the bed and eats in silence. Occasionally wipes his hands off on Sam's sheets, glaring.

When Cas comes back, Sam starts handing off research duties and they plan on scouring a graveyard before dawn to see if this thing can be put down easy or if it'll make them rattle the building until it pops out.

"I can't dig anymore today," Dean says. "I'm exhausted. Let's turn in and do it tomorrow, after we case the place."

"I can still dig today," Cas says, sliding the laptop back over to Sam.

"C'mon Cas, we've been up since seven in the morning _yesterday_ ," Dean gripes.

" _You've_ been up since 7 a.m. yesterday. I've been up since the last time I was human," he pulls the keys back from his pocket. "Get some rest. I'll get a shovel and see if I can find anyone."

Dean grumbles. "Well, I can't let you go on your own."

"I'll go with," Sam volunteers.

Chuck's about to whine that he's tired... but he also realizes he's still a half hour out from home.

"Me, too, I guess," he shrugs.

"Goddamnit," Dean lobs his trash at Cas who dodges it with a slight sideways lean. "Family field trip to the local cemetery."

«»

They trudge along in the dark until it starts getting light. As soon as the normies start moving around the world, it's no longer safe or productive to go poking about in graves.

"Okay, so can we sleep _now?_ " Dean demands.

"Yeah," Sam huffs, tossing the flashlights and shovels back in the trunk. "We'll swing by and sweep the building, interview staff in the afternoon. Pick it up later."

"I could--" Cas starts and Dean cuts him off.

"We know. But what's the rule, Cas? The one you keep ignoring?" Dean asks, pointed.

Castiel slumps. "Don't hunt on your own," he recites reluctantly.

"Motel. Sleep. Food. Then work," Dean slams the trunk shut. "Chuck, can we drop you off someplace?"

"His car's back at the motel," Sam says, and so they all simply load back into the Impala.

When Cas heads to join Chuck in the back seat again, Sam tugs at his sleeve and moves him to the front. He gets in next to Chuck.

Dean and Cas start their own conversation over the music up front. "You gonna drive home?" Sam asks.

"I- well," Chuck rubs at his eyes. "Would you mind if I crashed on the couch in your room?"

Sam looks pleased which is strange, but nice. "It's all yours. You gonna stick around for the rest tomorrow?"

"They know me in that building, that wouldn't be a great idea. Well, I mean, not _know-me_ know me, but, you know, they've seen me. So maybe, I think they shouldn't associate whatever breaking and entering you do tonight with me. I still have to live in this state when you drive away."

Sam pretends to pout. Like a fucking teenager. "You just don't wanna hang out with us, I see how it is."

"No. You guys are so much less awesome than me. I only eat at the cool kids' table," he agrees.

Sam shoves an elbow into his side. "You know how to do this, you know that, right? You wouldn't be useless. You'd be an asset. We never turn down a chance to have all hands on deck."

"I get nervous sometimes," Chuck shrugs, grossly underrepresenting the frequency with which he is, in fact, nervous.

They're quiet for a long stretch of road. Then Sam says, "Not around me."

Chuck blinks.  
Huh.  
That is absolutely true.

«»

Chuck wakes to a knock on the door. He can hear the shower running and he's curled up tight under his jacket. He rubs his eyes and gets up to answer.

"Did you even look to see who it is, first?" Dean says, "We could'a been here to murder you."

Chuck steps aside to let him and Cas in. "My first instinct is not to assume everyone's here to murder me. My first instinct is that Dean Winchester would knock on Sam Winchester's motel room door in the morning. Guess my instincts are one thousand percent on point."

Cas is a little more courteous. "Good morning, Chuck."

Chuck can smell the coffee Dean's carrying for himself and he remembers that he's got a nice, big bed waiting on the other side of a half hour drive. He can hit up the café he saw on the corner, drive home, and go back to sleep for a decent length of time.

Dean and Cas start doing a brief weapons inventory on Sam's bed when the shower stops.

Mmmmmaybe it would be best if Chuck were out the door before Sam went drifting around the room in a towel, looking for the pieces of his fed suit.

He doesn't know how well he'll handle freshly-clean, dripping, solid abs before his brain has kicked in for the day and the dude's brother is, like, _right there_.

He pulls on his jacket and shoes and grabs his keys and wallet and phone off the side table.

"You outta here?" Dean notices.

"I told Sam everything I know. It's not killing anybody yet. Uh. That we know of. So hopefully you guys will just be able to draw it out and polish it off. I don't have anything else to really contribute," he shrugs.

"Hey," Dean says as he turns away. He takes a step toward Chuck and seems to consider something for a long moment. "You know it's alright that you called, right? I know you don't think much of us and you don't wanna see the real scary shit, but. We don't. You know. Hate you or anything."

"Ttthanks?"

"I mean, it's cool that you came to the bunker. And that you and Sam are friends," Dean shoves his hands in his pockets and he just wants Chuck to understand him without having to say anymore.

He does get it- he really does. Dean builds from whatever scraps he can find. Now that he's not 'dead,' Chuck officially qualifies as a potentially useful stone in the small, precarious heap that Dean wishes he could cement into a home. A network of friends. An extended family.

And he thinks Chuck and Sam are friends.

Shit. Are they? Already? He didn't think he was doing it right.

The door creaks and Sam steps out in a whoosh of warm, moist air.

Oh jesus, he really is only wearing the towel.

"Guys," Sam motions to the guns on the bed, "I'm not even dressed yet," he gripes. "Could you bring us coffee and _then_ lose a hundred salt rounds in my sheets?"

"Dean only got coffee for himself," Cas tattles. "We had lunch, too."

"Thanks," Sam glares at his brother.

"You could bitch about it or you could hurry up so we can get this show on the road."

Sam grumbles but gathers his clothes and disappears into the bathroom again.

Holding very still and pretending he was invisible pretty much worked right there. Sam didn't seem to see Chuck frozen, by the door, helplessly staring.

He blinks back to his senses and shakes his head.

"Anyway. Good luck, I guess," he says sort of vaguely.

"Yeah, see you later," Dean says.

Cas nods in his direction.

And he slips out and off to his car and he waits a full ten minutes, until after he's gotten his coffee, to sit in the parking lot and close his eyes and replay the image of Sam holding his towel at his hip, the low light on his back as he stood in profile, the cling of wet hair at his neck, the flush across his shoulders and the soft look of clean skin.

He hears Sam gripe again, he hears him say _Could you bring us coffee and then_ \-- he hears "us" and he marvels at how it took so little time for Sam to accept Chuck on the couch in his motel room as a normal and natural occurrence. A perfectly regular way to wake up in the late morning.

He plays the image over just one more time and it's filed away to revisit, along with the other moments he keeps that he was never even in the room for. The ones that make him want to feel Sam's skin under his own, for real. The ones that make him want to touch.

Ping. Text message. Ping. Text message.

**Where did u go u were just here  
???**

He types back, **Going home to sleep. You have still not convinced me I am a hunter sorry have fun bye**

Chuck sips his coffee and restarts the car.

**U lil shit you didn't even have to dig a hole or anything.**

**2 pretty 2 dig holes** , Chuck types and throws a nice mess of sparkly emoticons in there for good measure.

**That's true.  
** **Will call when we know more.**  
**Heading out now.**

Chuck types and deletes and types and deletes and.

Well.

He types it one more time. It's so unnecessary. And he doesn't wanna send it. But he feels like it. He really wants to send it.

He sends it.

 **Be careful** , and then, **You know where I'll be** , he offers.

«»

Sam knows very well where he lives, yes.

And yet he doesn't show up to tell Chuck, in person, that the poltergeist was taken care of.

Sam tells him over the phone as they drive to the next crisis, called away by Charlie, who still hasn't learned the family rule about not hunting on her own.

But he can hear the smirk in Sam's voice when he says Dean and Cas were all well and ready to shove him off on Chuck's doorstep when they escaped the building.

They were trying to convince Sam that he needed a vacation.

_You know. We could take care of things for a while. When's the last time you had one of your nerdy days off?_

Chuck snorts.

"I know," Sam says, the wind whipping through the phone as he gossips about Dean and Cas from the back seat, directly behind them. "It's like they think we don't already know."

"Now that I told you what's up," Chuck repeats.

"Now that you told me what's up," Sam laughs.

«»

Chuck has stopped flipping his keyring around his finger because, last week, the whole shebang slipped right through his hand and plunked through a grate, into the filthy hell of wastewater below. For some reason, he's stopped in the middle of a parking lot, now. One minute he's mourning the passing of the greatest bottle opener ever to grace a keychain and the next he's at the QuickMart with a case of Bud under his arm. Whistling. His flip-flops smacking as he shrugs through the door and back out to his car.

It happens just like that.

And, just like that, when he drives back up to his apartment, there's Sam fucking goddamn Winchester, head turned towards him, hand poised at his front door, ready to knock again.

He must hear Chuck still whistling.

Chuck stops when Sam's eyes slip down to the cardboard box full of beer.

Oh boy.

Oh wow.

"Uh. Hi. Sam."

Oof. That's Sam's _I knew it was too good to be true, why do I ever expect anything good to happen in the world_ face.

"I just, um," Chuck clears his throat, "got home. Um. I've been out all day."

Sam nods. A sad, sad nod.

"I jus- just stopped. For. For, uh." The box is heavy and cold against his side.

Sam nods. Sad, _super sad_ nod.

Dean wasn't exaggerating, it really is like kicking a puppy.

Chuck's shoulders drop. He trudges up to his door and tries not to draw attention to the fact that he has to shift the weight of the case to handle the lock.

He turns to wave Sam in but Sam is just standing there, passing his own car keys between his hands. Thinking deep, as Sam is prone to do.

"Okay. Look, okay?? I didn't. I didn't even think about it. I just stopped on my way back from the bank and I had the cash and I was there-- just all of a sudden, I was there. And the beer and. I had cash. And. And."

They just stare at each other for a moment over Chuck's threshold.

"Um." He hefts the case and passes it through the doorway. "Here. Just take it," and yeah, maybe he could sound a little less miserable about it, but it's not what it looks like.

It's not! It's really not.

And he could explain that but.

Well.

Sam pockets his keys and takes the case.

He doesn't head to his car. For some reason Chuck thinks he wouldn't waste good beer, he might take it back to Dean and then... Sam disappears around the side of the apartment complex.

Chuck steps out. Looks far around. Doesn't see Sam.

He turns and locks back up behind himself. Then heads around the corner.

Sam's long legs have already taken him far to the back of the lot. He's got the beer case at his feet and he's leaning in front of the dumpster. He rips open the cardboard, then flips a knife out of his pocket. One of the more harmless, utility knives.

His hair falls from behind his ear and obscures his face as Chuck clops forward, curious. The case of beer rattles as Sam dips to pull a bottle out.

Sam's bottle opener is efficient, too. He pops off the lids and dumps each beer into the grass, then tosses the empty into the blue recycling bin.

Chuck can't watch this.  
What a waste. Chuck had blown his frequent shopper card points plus fifteen actual dollars on that. Sam couldn't even let him try to return it.

Chuck squints. Can you even return beer? Who would return beer? If you were gonna return beer you might as well leave it outside a tent in the woods behind the Wal-Mart. At least make somebody happy with it.

He walks away before Sam's done with all the bottles.

Christ, he'd bought the bottles, too. Not just a case of cheapass cans.

Chuck rounds the building and unlocks his door again and he kinda wonders how pervasive Sam's disappointment will be. Will it be Winchester style, where he hops in his car and doesn't call again until he needs to get out of the bunker? Will it be emotional-Sam style where he tries to council Chuck through a perceived crisis? Will he bully him around, call him a loser or something? The tough-love approach? Or maybe that quiet, stewing disappointment for half a day. Maybe they watch a baseball game on tv or something and then Sam gets up for a bathroom break, slips on his shoes and never contacts him again.

God, that's really depressing. He peeks out the blinds but doesn't see that the car's moved.

He opens the door and still hears a faint clinking from around the building. Chuck just drops and sits on the step. Grabs his sandals off his feet and tosses them into the entryway. Crosses his arms over his knees. 

Sam probably recycled the cardboard, too. He's empty-handed when he reappears. He also doesn't have his car keys back in his hand.

A breath Chuck didn't know he was holding whooshes out of him and he stands, nervous.

Sam walks up and is just a touch too formal when he points inside. "You mind?"

Chuck squishes aside and Sam ducks in.

The brief inspection of the kitchen that Chuck walks in on is not exactly inconspicuous. There aren't peeled labels or empty cans to find in the trash or anything. No coasters with empties sitting on the windowsill. Not even a bottle opener since Chuck's is gone, gone forever.

Sam finally turns.

"You hadn't? Before?"

Chuck shakes his head.

Sam bites the corner of his lip and his eyes sweep the kitchen again. Hawk eyes looking for clues he knows he always finds. One brother a drunk, one father a mean drunk. He knows what he's looking for, it's bred into him.

He doesn't find anything. So he turns to Chuck again. "You put in a lot of work, man. You were really sick. But you kicked it. So. So, just," he hesitates, "Why?"

Chuck shrugs and actually shuffles his fucking feet and his eyes skitter away.

"You didn't even think about it," Sam recalls. "You stopped on the way back... from the bank?" he tries to remember what he babbled correctly, tries to _understand_.

Chuck huffs a breath. Straightens. He closes his eyes. This isn't a technique of his own. This is a Sam technique, actually, something he only really saw from the inside. He pulls up a reserve of calm because he might not think he needs it-- but he does.

All of a sudden, he understands that. Sam is almost the only friend he has. And if he says something that isn't the truth right now, Sam will just dump him by the wayside. Some cases are too much trouble to have picked up, the victims too ungrateful. They should have gotten their just desserts.

Chuck would really prefer not to run Sam off. From the outside, Sam is more trouble than might seem worth it, too. But Chuck knows better and he's sincerely worried that Sam will stomp right out that door, right now.

So, he pulls up the calm and he tries to remember.

He was in the parking lot at the bank. He'd just cashed an article check. It was a good check and these $200 writing pieces are piling up since he quit the booze. The money is coming in and it isn't going out by the bottle, by the case.

He was in the bank parking lot. He had crossed back to his car, over a sewer grate. He had a taste for beer and decided to get it.

Chuck opens his eyes.

"You know how you got there," Sam says, watching revelation dawn on Chuck's face.

"I was thinking about my keys. And I wanted a beer. And I had to pull a u-ey to get back to the road anyway. So I just stopped at the corner store. It took," he shrugs, "two minutes. Flat. From when I could taste it in the back of my mouth to when I was in the cooler picking between Bud and Heineken."

"About your keys?"

Chuck explains the set he'd lost, that he was staring down at the duplicates in his hand.

Sam nods.

It's as simple as that. Just a little trigger.

And if Sam hadn't dropped in this afternoon, Chuck probably would have cracked open the first one on the couch, with his feet up, flipping to ESPN.

"Sam, I'm sorry," he says, voice thin. Inches away from hurting himself. From starting the old cycle all over again. From undoing the work he did through fever and nausea and pain. Undoing Sam's careful consolation and crapping all over their brand-new-- whatever this is. Wasting the time Sam's spent on him.

He clears his throat, lifts his head, focuses his eyes and he says, again, "I'm sorry."

Sam shakes his head and says, "I know." He claps a hand on Chuck's shoulder and shakes him a little. "It's okay. Guess I have good timing."

Chuck snorts. "Suspiciously good. Hunter's timing."

Sam laughs, too. And agrees.

«»

Sam isn't pissed.

After they spend the day hanging out, he leaves, heads back home.

But he stays away for a long while. He doesn't text back and, between news reports and the sudden silence, Chuck gets this dreadful, tense ball in the pit of his stomach. Something big must be going down. He's afraid it involves the angels and he doesn't want any part of that. He just hopes the three of them are safe.

He's tempted to call. But if Sam doesn't even have time to answer texts? Nah.

The news reports pass and things quiet down to the usual business of humanity. Casual murder and war and mayhem. The norm.

Still, Sam doesn't call. Not a peep.

Chuck wonders, if Sam died, would Cas spare a moment to let him know? Because fuck knows Dean wouldn't. He'd be too steeped in misery. Or in quick pursuit of his own death.

Sometimes Chuck will consider his silent phone and wonder if they've idealized _family_ so much that the actual upkeep and mechanics of such a unit escapes them.

Or if he just didn't make it into the fold in good enough time to even count.

«»

Chuck comes home with six airplane bottles of vodka and some Sailor Jerry.

He lines them up on the coffee table and slides from the couch to the carpet to stare at them up close.

This didn't require mental maintenance before, but it's been so silent for so long that he's now thinking about it non-stop: there is not anything in the world stopping him from getting fucking obliterated right the fuck now.

He would have to put effort into blocking his own path. He would have to put an object in his way.

He does not want to do this.

Chuck reaches across to the corner of the table and his wallet falls to the floor when he grabs for his cell phone.

If he can't make this make sense, if he can't come here and physically stand in the way, if Sam is playing savior and can't stop for Chuck's pitiful little bullshit, maybe he can at least tell Chuck how he ended up here. Because he can't remember. He maybe doesn't want to remember. He maybe wants to just grab the little bottles and keep them safe right within reach, right under the couch, and savor every drop of the rum. The sweet darkness of it.

He calls.

"This is Sam, leave a message. Or just text me, please."

Chuck uncaps the rum and holds it between his knees while he observes that the tv remote is too far to reach but he could crawl to it.

Let's try again.  
"This is Sam, leave a message. Or just text me, please."

Okay. He puts the bottle back on the table and traces his steps back. From slumping to the floor to the front door. From the front door to the car. From the car to the tag office. He'd been paying the registration on his car.

There were girls there, in the line next to his. He can't understand--

His mind walks away from it.

He grabs his head and he _squeezes_.

Flash pops behind his eyelids and he misses the times when he never used to have to think about the effects that light had on the backs of your eyelids because whenever he thought about eyes flashing black and vomiting smoke and smelling of hellfire all he had to do was just. fucking. _drink_.

"Fuck me," he spits.  
"This is Sam, leave a message. Or just text me, please."

"Fuck this," his eyes are watery and he remembers, vividly, the very frequent symptoms of prophecy. The way the headache would roll up behind his eyes. How, unattended, it would turn into shooting bolts. And how the bolts were delivering images and sounds to him. Fucking with his senses. Teaching him what month-old torture chamber blood smelled like, and gunpowder, and flesh melting from a rougarou.

He shudders and crawls back up onto his couch. Tries one more time.

"This is Sam, leave a message. Or just text me, please."

Chuck does not expect to actually be able to fall asleep with his head pressing into the back cushions and his system failing and his heart breaking and wanting the world to end and to never feel again.

Maybe it's a panic attack and he passes out from lack of oxygen.

Or maybe he just goes to sleep because his body needs it.

«»

It must be the latter. He hears a clicking and isn't aware that it's woken him up. From the floor, his phone chimes with a text and the lock screen reads 1:42 p.m.

He doesn't hear anything else until he hears someone--

Sam crouches next to him. Puts a hand on the back of his neck.

"I'm sorry I didn't answer."

Chuck just blinks.

Sam sighs and sits next to the couch. His hand falls to Chuck's shoulder.

"Chuck?"

"I heard you."

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine," he says, airy and unbothered.

Sam looks really sad. "I'm _sorry_ ," he insists.

"I didn't. I don't think I ended up drinking?"

"Was it just the seven bottles?"

"Think so."

Sam is quiet.

"Do you remember what happened to make you...?"

"Twins," Chuck says, because he does suddenly remember. "They were twins and all I could see was shapeshifters. There were twin sisters getting their learner's permits. All I could remember was the shifter. In the bank. The way Dean peeled the skin off her arm and--" his mouth is going dry just saying it.

He's squished down into the cushions, rolled in the night to face away from the back of the couch.

"We have," Sam starts, hesitant. "We have issues, Chuck. If we were anybody else they'd call it battlefield fatigue. PTSD. We've seen a little too much. And you've seen everything we couldn't even witness first-hand. You know you're allowed to freak out, right?"

"Just not drink," it comes out sounding bitter.

"You really hate giving up drinking? You really hate leaving your crutch behind that much? Chuck it's not like you were partying. It's not like your dancing days are over. You were just hazing out pain."

"And now I have to _feel it_."

Sam slumps. "Yeah. Yeah, you do. I'm sorry."

"Sorry," Chuck mindlessly repeats.

"Yeah. Sorry. Maybe I didn't want you to drink yourself to death. Maybe I wanted you to live and be conscious and." Sam rolls his shoulders. Cracks his neck.

Chuck clumsily reaches out and pats Sam's hair down. He must have driven with the window open. He's a really good friend who Chuck didn't even have to go looking for. He didn't have to even _try_ for this, not once.

"Thank you, Sammy."

And the fact that Sam smiles at the name only means it's official.


	2. half full

They text about the shows they watch, the news they read. And Sam calls and complains about hunts. They were doing that before, just a little more infrequently. Now? Chuck keeps quinoa in the pantry.

This is officially a friendship.

This is, like, _officially_ a friendship.

So, the first time Sam drives too far in one night and needs to either sleep in his car or tough it out seven more miles to Chuck's place, Chuck rubs his eyes, climbs out of bed, and pulls the untouched second pair of sheets out of the set he'd bought for his bedroom.

"I could fucking collapse right now," Sam says when Chuck opens the door to him.

Chuck points toward the back. "Bedroom's yours."

Sam pauses. Of course.

"I can't take your bed."

"You're twice the length of the couch and I'm not big on vacuuming. Take the goddamn bed, Sam."

"Well, then we can both fit on the bed like adults," Sam says through a yawn.

"You know, I saw a porn that started like that once."

"I'm not taking your bed from you," Sam says with finality, punctuating it by kicking his shoes off next to the couch.

Chuck rolls his eyes and turns to grab the sheets back off the cushions. "I read _fanfiction_ that started like that once. Come on."

Sam follows him back to the bedroom.

«»

Sam keeps to his side, with his arms curled up under his pillow. Chuck faces opposite and they don't disturb each other at all.

The one thing Chuck never skimps on, apartment to apartment, is a huge bed. Sometimes he'll wallow there in the dark for days at a time, so it's got to be a really great Hooray for Depression kinda bed with cool sheets and soft pillows and plenty of room. So they both do really fit comfortably.

They do the next time, too, though Sam comes knocking with a huge, bloody gash down his side and what appears to be a rather large chunk missing.

Chuck tapes and stiches as best as he can and then sets Sam up with painkillers and sends him off to sleep.

He dozes on the couch after watching tv until Sam limps out of bed at around two in the morning to pester him about how the creaky old thing will wreck his neck.

"What if I kick you in my sleep or something? And you bleed out in my house?"

"You sleep like the dead, Chuck, it's not gonna happen," and Sam almost physically hauls him out of the front room, insistent.

So, yeah.

It doesn't take Chuck too fucking long after that.

He'd seen way back, after all. When he was still a prophet the memories leaked all over the place and he saw the very roots of the things. Back, even, to when the demon inhabiting Brady had introduced Sam to Jess.

Chuck's seen it a few times before. He feels bad about it. Intrusive.

He knows too much.

He knows exactly when it ticks over, just based on the way Sam looks at him.

Because he's witnessed, through the lens of omniscience and however else that bullshit works-- he's seen what Sam Winchester looks like when he's in love.

One day, Sam's circled around again, after Team Free Will all finished with another hunt.

Sam groans when Chuck calls them that, but he doesn't tell him it's not funny. And he's stopped making excuses other than, "We're done here, I'm headed over."

In an almost-but-not-quite tangential way to their conversation over coffee, one night, he asks, "So how often did you, you know? Peek in on Dean? And, I mean. The books got kind of explicit sometimes. But you never really, um. Turned that on me. Except for a couple times."

Once with Madison and once with Ruby. Chuck was keeping the demon blood under wraps so he didn't write Sam with her more than that one time. Simply stuck to implication.

"Dean fucks like gangbusters, though, it's kinda hard to avoid," Chuck grimaces. "Couldn't exactly get around every time it happened."

And, truth be told, he might have choked off the character development and the personal revelations in Sam's case.

He kept things to himself because he _wanted_ them for himself. He wanted Sam, ultimately, to look like the good guy he was, even if the fans never quite stanned him as hard as they did Dean. The ones who did see what Chuck saw in Sam were really paying attention.

He actually shudders thinking of Becky.

Goddamnit. She is really not a great argument on behalf of "Sam Girls."

So creepy.

But it meant that Sam _did_ come off as a good guy. And his true complexity belonged only to Chuck and Dean.

Fans would say things, sometimes, that made him feel very protective of Sam. Which became laughable when he was finally faced with all fifty towering feet of him, of course.

But Dean lived on complexity of emotion, wore his heart on his sleeve when he never wanted to or intended for it to happen. Dean left himself open to goodness and to love and to the hurt that comes with those choices.

Sam never felt he had options. He spent his whole damn life making up for the perceived crime of being poisoned by demons. He thought he killed Jess by not warning her he'd seen her burn before it happened. He closed himself off and just focused on output: what he could do to solve the world's problems. Not what was waiting out there for _him_.

Faced with Sam, at long last, leaning across his fucking kitchen counter in his own apartment, Chuck sees that little thread of jealousy Sam's strung out, trying to see if Chuck will follow it. Will reveal that he's always liked Dean best. That he would, in fact, profess to some level of attraction to Dean that he's never had for Sam.

Because, _obviously_ , he wrote the books that way.

Chuck's never been a great writer. But he's taped and glued plot together over the holes he left in the Supernatural stories. The things he hid were to protect the Winchesters before he even knew that's what he was doing.

He's not a great writer. Probably just a decent one.

But he can see the line that Sam's thrown out. And he doesn't tug on it.

"Not my favorite parts," Chuck continues to explain. "More fanservice than anything. And at a certain point, it was kind of what people expected from Dean. I didn't give as much of you away because, well," he shrugs and keeps it as close to the truth as possible, "I didn't really want the audience to have you. Guess I was... keeping you to myself."

Sam considers this. Sips from his mug.

"Trying not to make me look 'unsympathetic,'" Sam recalls, like a challenge.

Chuck shakes his head. "No." And doesn't give him any more than that.

Sam is weirdly confrontational about it. Strangely defensive. So Chuck simply chooses not to dignify it. When Sam finally settles on what's bothering him, he'll regret that he needled Chuck at all. So he just acts like it's not happening.

For the rest of the night and the next day, when they continue to hang out while Chuck picks up groceries and shops for a new wireless keyboard, he is aware of the way Sam watches him.

Sam knows he's not with anyone.  
And now he knows -- he's had it confirmed -- that Chuck isn't more interested in Dean.

And Sam looks the way he looks when he's in love with someone.

The dots aren't hard to connect.

Chuck feels really old. 

«»

He sits in his car in front of Bosco's bar, a shitty little rathole.

Sam would never expect him to drink in an actual bar.

To be honest, he doesn't even like drinking in bars.

But he's thinkin' about it.

Drinking alone in his house, or in his string of dark little apartments, gave him the air of a true-blue alcoholic. He didn't pay any more than he had to for his booze, he didn't have to tip anyone, he didn't have to listen to somebody else's music or try to hit on people so he wouldn't look like the sulking drunk he simply wanted to be.

He doesn't deserve the way Sam's been looking at him.

This is one of those moments when Sam would want him to call. He could say what's bothering him and he wouldn't have to drink about it.

He can't call Sam and say, _Hey, I think you're falling in love with me and I'm the last person on the planet who deserves it_.

First of all, you don't say that to a person. And second, the only thing that Sam is going to ask as a follow-up is the prophet question: How long have you known?

He hadn't known. This isn't like Dean and Cas where it's written all across their future and they avoid it because "Fate doesn't rule them." Because they'd rather fight EVERYONE than be happy for just five minutes.

He hadn't known this was gonna happen. There was no hint of it. As far as Chuck saw, Sam was stuck in the pit. He had no future. The future that was written for him ended in Michael and Lucifer's battle.

There was no planning for this.

But it's like he's reading it off a page he doesn't remember writing. It's in front of him and it's happening.

He doesn't deserve Sam. He doesn't deserve his company on a bi-weekly-- well, now _weekly_ basis.

Sam shouldn't have to put up with him.

But on a playing field of nothing but negatives, the least of these negatives is making Sam happy just for the hell of it. Accepting whatever Sam ultimately approaches him with because it will make _Chuck_ happy.

The best they can ask for is to not be miserable, alone.

Keys in the ignition and crunching off the gravel, back to the highway. He drove a half hour, busting gas he can't afford, just to stare at a bar and not go inside.

He would drive further and do less just to make Sam happy. To make him feel like things can be fixed.

Chuck liked drinking. He did. And Sam was right. He wasn't exactly partying his life away on the booze. He was just muzzling what couldn't be fixed or reasoned with.

He's gonna feel like this again.  
He will have moments like this in the future.

Because Chuck likes drinking. Present tense.

But he likes Sam a thousand times more.

«»

At first, he doesn't know if he's aching to move just for the sake of moving again. Just because he's been in one apartment for a while now and it feels unsafe.

It builds, though, to a combination of things. The couch looks rattier than he thinks it did just days before. The kitchen table is tiny and ridiculous looking where it stands.

When the various appliances cycle off, it gets so quiet he can hear his neighbors talking in a reasonable tone, through the walls.

The schedule of the landscaping guys bothers him. The parking policy for the complex bothers him. The way the light doesn't come in the windows until right before sunset bothers him.

And there is a low, unsettled feeling, too. Goosebumps when he walks outside late at night. He's always wondered if crazy catches. If, sometimes, the monsters only find you because you know what monsters look like. Almost as if the supernatural world weaving through humanity were just a delusion shared by the select few who experienced it and no amount of breaking media coverage could ever shed light on what wasn't actually there.

He starts to look into places in Chicago. It would be a little more central to sports action and a lot more likely to get him paying gigs. But he would be in a Real City and networking means socializing.

And he could more easily choose Kansas City. A sporty town in itself. And only 4 hours from Lebanon.

He finds that everything fits back into the boxes he used before.

When he makes the phone calls and puts the coffee machine away, he realizes he's seriously doing this.

He hasn't said anything to Sam, but he's feeling irrationally judged, anyway. Needy little alcoholic, just trying to be where he'll have better access to Sam to make more demands on his time and absorb all the patience he has to spare.

So he straight-up doesn't tell anyone he's handed over the keys and is driving away. He doesn't mention that he moved. He finds an apartment with a couch _and_ loveseat, a fridge that doesn't sound like it runs on diesel, and an actual slab of a kitchen table with big chairs.

Sam calls when he's unloading his first groceries.

"Hey. You around?"

"Around where?"

"Your computer. I wanna send you this thing I wrote. See if it makes sense. If it sounds academic. I'm sending it to a professor. I'm hoping he'll answer something about this book I found."

"Hold up, I'm putting things-- Actually, can I call you back? I don't have my laptop set up right now."

"Yeah, well, you can just send it back to me when you've read it. If you've got time. Shit, I didn't call in the middle of a sentence, did I? Were you writing?"

"No, it's fine. I was-" he stops himself. He doesn't say. Almost as if it were embarrassing. But at some point (probably within the next few days, if he's right about the schedule), Sam will just drive out to Colorado and expect to find him in the last place he looked for him.

He'll know eventually.

Chuck chickens out and begs off and hangs up. He finishes emptying all the bags and stowing stuff. He even sets the coffee machine back up before he sits at his new kitchen table with his laptop and calls Sam back.

"So what am I looking at?"

"This guy's father wrote a book and I'm trying to see if his dad left any notes 'cause there's some information I think is missing from the text. If it's not, then it's possible he made some of it up. I just need to know which it is before we base any of our real-life crimefighting on it," Chuck hears what he imagines is Sam pulling on a beer. It makes him thirsty. Fuck.

Sam's gonna laugh at him. Or think he's a creep. Or something.

He reads through the email inserting commas aloud so Sam can just adjust it. He rearranges the language in one sentence and then approves of the rest. "Looks good."

"Are you doing anything tomorrow?" bursts out of Sam like he couldn't contain it anymore.

"I'm...." he trails off, eyes skipping over the few boxes. He takes his glasses off and scrubs a hand down his face. "I'm moving in. I'll just be. Shifting stuff around tomorrow."

There's silence. And then, "Moving in? You moved? Between, like, Monday, when I last talked to you, and now?"

He hadn't even texted between then and now. It had been silence. That had been part of what sealed the deal in, yes, just a matter of five days.

"On to the next shitheap, yeah."

"Did you get kicked out or something?" Sam is baffled.

"No. I just. I had to move."

"Did you see something?"

"No. No. I just. I just. Couldn't anymore."

"Couldn't what? Wait, how far are you this time?"

Chuck blows out a breath and mumbles, "Outside Kansas City."

It's very quiet before Sam says, "Oh."

Then, "The... the Missouri side or?"

"The Kansas side." He wishes his stuff was unpacked so he could just burrow into the bed and never speak aloud to another human again.

Sam blows out a breath over the phone. "That is a serious fucking relief. I mean, that's perfect, you know, if something happened, I could be there in four hours, no sweat. That's an easier drive than Colorado."

And he sounds exactly as relieved as he says he is.

This is the problem with that:

Basically Chuck has _sexual fantasies_ about someone giving a shit.

It stems all the way from youth. From being the middle child in a big, loud family, and not conforming to the norm within it. He had to beg and claw to be involved in their lives. Eventually he was just able to give that up. When he left home for college, he had the saw in his hand. When he left college, the limb was severed. And nobody protested. Not a single call from his sisters even trying to convince him that he'd made mom sad. It was like he slipped away in the night to join the circus and nobody expected anything less from such a misfit child.

He knows better than almost anyone else that Sam's intentions aren't just pure -- they stem from a genuine _need_ to help. He thinks helping people is a set of stepping stones to love. So he helps people when they allow it and once they allow it, he sees his _in_ and _he doesn't stop_. That's the kind of thing Chuck has come to expect from Dean. He's the one who flat-out tells people they're worrying him and tries to reshape their lives to fit into the reach of his influence. But the tendency really runs through both brothers. Sam just has to adjust to the taste of the words in his mouth. He has to decide how much he wants to care and if caring will hurt his wounded heart too deeply.

Chuck always loved that about Sam. The way it was more closed off and cautious in him because he learned hard lessons young. And Chuck has fucking fantasized about being worth being taken care of. He doesn't think that he is worth it, all told. But now his fantasies and Sam's deep-rooted _needs_ can practically feed off one another.

You'd think that, as a small-statured man, he would want the opposite. He'd dream about being somebody's hero. You'd think he would have injected even a little bit of himself into Sam or Dean in the books and lived through them. You'd think he'd try to see himself as the leading man. But he's a realist. He never tried to be anyone's champion. Never ran out and vanquished monsters, even after, when he knew they were real and they were close.

His approach to being a writer even sucks. He's one of those people who waits for the words to come. He sat around and the apocalypse story was just delivered to him for years, without effort.

When he doesn't have to go out and put in the legwork on his own, when he can just get by on the minimum of effort, leaving his days wide-open and unscheduled and unburdened by the drudgery of being working-class, he'll take it.

So having someone pretty much walk into his life and _want_ to take care of him?

Sam considers his proximity a relief. Chuck has somehow burdened Sam with his presence while unburdening him from some of the stress involved in keeping him safe if something should happen. _What a relief_.

Chuck is dazed. It's all hit him at once. This is happening. He does not know why Sam has looked into him and seen that he's worth the effort. Whatever Sam sees in him, he should pry it out of his insides and frame it and send it to a museum. Whatever within him would draw Sam Winchester close must be as bright as Jess, as beautiful as a life saved, as smart and solid as Dean. If it even exists. If he hasn't somehow just duped the man who saved the world into giving a shit about him.

"I'm not doing anything. Tomorrow," he mentions, halting.

"You want help moving your stuff in?" Sam automatically offers.

Yes. All eleven boxes. That'll be a huge endeavor. Totally worth the time, effort, and gas money.

"Sure," he says.

"Truth be told," Sam drops his voice, "I don't think things are, you know, totally sewn up between Dean and Cas. I think I need to let them just... be _intense_ in their own space for a few days. I keep worrying I'm gonna walk in on a really awkward moment."

Chuck gives a thin laugh and the tension that just built in him eases. "Mi nuevo casa es su casa."

"Bien. Gracias," he can hear Sam smiling. "It'll be nice to... I donno. I feel like I'm starting to lose my grip on where I fit, almost. But. I kinda know where I stand with you. Kind of," he repeats, and it is soft with implication. It _means things_ and Chuck has to be gentle with it.

"It's okay," Chuck assures him. "We're fucking besties and we'll figure out what you're gonna be when you're a grown-up, together."

«»

One morning after Sam's slept over, Chuck is woken by the juddering of the bed. Sam waking, restless after sunrise. With the light filtering in, Chuck doesn't wanna open his eyes so he burrows into the sheets and settles.

He feels Sam staring.  
It's kind of intense. It charges the air.

Sam wouldn't touch someone without them knowing. Without them conscious and able to rebuff.

Chuck doesn't want to disturb the moment and he also kinda wants to drop back off to sleep, warm and comfortable. He's not sure he can with Sam's open eyes just a foot away.

So he pulls the sheets tight around him and rolls to his side, shifts until his back is pressed against Sam, then just absorbs the warmth. It's fucking really nice. He knows Sam won't so much as lift a finger, but he also won't leave unless he really wants to.

Chuck hears and feels Sam sigh.  
Then Sam's head shifts to share his pillow.  
And Chuck doesn't wake again until after noon.

«»

Unresolved sexual tension can be fun if you let it.

(Chuck learned that from writing Dean and Cas.)

Sam gets the bat signal from his brother. He has to drive north and meet them in six hours to pretend Feds and play with monsters.

So Sam tugs his tie into place and they're hollering across the apartment as Chuck tries to find where he left the power cord for his laptop. When he wanders back to the bedroom Sam is in his nice shirt and pants, scowling in the mirror.

He's well able to do up his own tie. He just hates the colors on this one clashing with the only suit he could find clean. 

Chuck scoots around him to the closet and comes back with the grey and blue stripes. It's one of only two ties in his possession but it looks better than the yellow and red with what Sam's got on. "Take that off," he says, coming back around.

Sam blinks at him in the mirror. "What?"

So Chuck pushes him around and yanks at the unfinished knot hanging across Sam's chest.

Sam's eyes go wide.  
Chuck offers up the new tie and he gets it.

He yanks the ugly one off and Chuck doesn't wait for him to fold it away. He tosses one end of the tie up and around and Sam stoops so he can do it up himself.

This is literally right out of the UST playbook. Chuck adjusts and ties the tie diligently, his knuckles moving against Sam's throat more than once, until he's watching Chuck work, holding his breath.

Chuck finishes by smoothing the tie down the center of Sam's chest to his belly and he doesn't know if that's his pulse rabbiting in his fingers or Sam's.

Sam stares at him up close.

So Chuck straightens Sam's collar. 

And licks his own lips because this is actually working really well.

He tugs the tie once, as it's just hanging there. "So be careful, I guess."

Sam blinks slow. "I will." There it is. The look again. "Thanks."

Chuck shrugs.  
He nods down at Sam's hand before lifting it to button the cuff.

Sam looks drugged.

He lifts the left to let Chuck do that one, too.

He was in a hurry before but now he's not moving.

"I missed you," he says after a long moment. Quiet. "When things were quiet for a while and you were-" he motions around and shrugs, "moving and then this time I just got here and," he aims to recover what he blurted out but then it just drops off.

This time he planned to stay Friday through Sunday. He got here at around breakfast and he has to leave before dinner.

Chuck nods.

"I mean I missed you by _that much_ , you know? If I had gotten here sooner-" he stops, realizing no matter how he spins it, it sounds the same.

"After?" Chuck asks. "Maybe?"

Sam nods. "If you're not busy."

Chuck can't help but roll his eyes. "The day I'm _actually_ busy, I'll let you know."

Sam smiles slow and then the sound of the phone shocks him upright.

Chuck sends him out the door still on the line with Dean, one arm in his jacket, power cord trailing behind him, spilling out of his bag.

He closes the door behind himself, then turns around and knocks on it.

" _Shut up,_ " he snaps into the phone, just as Chuck's opening the door. Sam puts the phone to his chest. "Sorry. Not you. Did you see my-"

Chuck scoops his car keys off the table and hands them over.

For like a solid three seconds he's sure Sam is gonna dart in and kiss him like a housewife seeing her hubby off to work.

Dean's voice squawks out of the phone again. "And where the FUCK is the lamb's blood??"

"Text me when you get there," Chuck requests, and he knows there's a small, serene smile on his face.

Because Sam's looking at him.  
Like _that_.  
Again.

"Yeah," Sam sounds a little breathless. "Bye."

«»

Sam does text when he gets there.

Then: complete radio silence. Again.

There could be a few reasons for this, up to and including actual death and near-death. And his phone being broken. And, oh yeah, Sam freaking out about how Chuck acted.

Sam's calls and texts come from three different numbers these days. When a fourth, anonymous number calls, he's tempted to let it go to voice mail.

But, really, too eager to hear from Sam.

So he answers.

"Chuck?" Only it's Dean.

"Uh, yeah. Hey."

"Yeah. Hi. Did Sam give you the rundown at any point?"

"Haven't heard from him since Friday. Why?"

Dean sighs static on the other end. "I don't know why he thinks you can help, but he's asking for you."

"Me?" Chuck squeaks. "Nah. No, no. I didn't agree to any hunting. No hunting activities for me."

Dean jumps in, impatient, "Yeah, well, he's _asking_ for you, so, hunting, no hunting, I don't care. How fast can you get to Winona, Minnesota?"

"I don't wanna go to Winona! What even-- give Sam the phone."

"Sam can't come to the phone right now," Dean sounds patronizing.

"Then give it to Cas, I need to speak with your _adult guardian_ ," Chuck challenges.

Dean curses. "Look, come. Don't come. Don't care. I promised Sam I'd call and if you've got no interes-"

There's a rattle and muffled voices and a clatter and then Cas.

"Chuck."

Chuck rubs at his temple. "Yeah, still here."

"Sam is unconscious and unable to speak. He conveyed to us that he wanted to see you."

"Unconscious and unable," he repeats.

"Dean is... being dismissive-- He's ambivalent about involving you."

"Fantastic. I care about that so much. Why is Sam _unable_ to speak?"

"He was attacked. We're still working the case."

Chuck goes very cold very suddenly. "How bad is it?"

"Sam will be fine, but he needs time to recover," Cas always cuts to the chase, "Will you be heading north or not?"

Chuck swallows. He can always find WiFi at a coffee shop or something and submit his work from there-- of course, actually, fuck it. What the hell does he care about his work? He doesn't promise them fucking articles. And they've got plenty of overeager, cheap students to fill up pages. "Where am I going?"

"I'll send coordinates to your phone. And. I'll tell Sam you're coming."

"Thanks. Thanks, Cas."

«»

Cas updates him when he finally gets to a good, long stretch of road. A 200-year-old vampire practicing witchcraft was taking his victims down by poisoning them. Some kind of spell that starts crushing your throat when you drink it, disabling the victim and allowing them to be fed off of without pursuit. Sam drank something, unsuspecting, and the next thing he knows, he's on the ground getting his neck mauled.

Cas could fix some of the physical damage, but the spell was from the old hag the vamp had apprenticed with. Ancient and hard to root out. Most of it would have to heal on its own.

He warns Chuck that Sam looks pretty awful. And his neck and throat are still in a lot of pain.

Chuck doesn't ask for more updates after that. He just drives. He started out when it was light and eventually the road is pitch ahead of him and he just keeps going.

It makes a certain sense that Sam would ask for Chuck now. It wouldn't under most other circumstances. But Sam has said that he trusts Chuck's words. That he normally has the right ones. If he can't speak, he needs a voice to go up against his brother that might actually know what he intends to say. Not that Chuck knows everything that's gonna come out of Sam's mouth before he says it. He just has enough insight and maybe he needs another goddamn friend there. (One that isn't sleeping with Dean.)

It's around nine at night. Dean's directions to their specific motel leave a little to be desired.

So does his behavior once Chuck finally steps into Dean and Cas's room.

The only way Chuck can describe it is that Dean's suddenly pissed at him for being there for Sam. Would he be this fucking petty just because Sam asked for help from a friend instead of his brother?

Maybe. 

"He won't shut up about you," Dean grouses.

And pauses.

"I mean, he can't even talk but he won't shut the fuck up about it- whatever. He's not having a hard time holding his head up anymore but swallowing hurts. We ran out of stationary to write on so good luck with that." He smacks Chuck on the back so he trips forward into Sam's room. He leaves both doors ajar so they can float between the two rooms.

Sam is on the bed, facing the opposite direction. Above his shirt collar, Chuck can see the back of his neck. It's completely vicious.

Chuck knocks on the open door to alert Sam or wake him up or whatever.

Sam blinks up, then looks over. He's a flurry of movement then, throwing covers out of the way and coming around the bed and approaching Chuck.

"Goddamnit. _Sam_ ," Chuck is amazed. From under Sam's ears, down and around his jaw and disappearing under his shirt, Sam's skin is a rainbow of painful colors. Blood brought to the surface and muscles deeply bruised. Cas said he got rid of the teeth marks from the vamp's feeding but there are still vivid spots, like fingerprints or curves of fang sets, that look worse than the surrounding skin.

Sam tries to speak to him and nothing comes out.

"I can't hear you," Chuck shakes his head.

Sam nods, shrugs, and turns to dump himself onto the couch looking defeated.

Chuck sits down, wedges in next to him, and he cringes looking from side to side at the range of damage on Sam's neck.

He's not suicidal, so he looks over his shoulder to double-check that Dean isn't around.

He pushes Sam's hair away from his neck and grimaces in sympathy at how purple and red and blue and painful it looks. He's said it to himself a thousand times while writing: "Poor broken Sammy," he mutters, and touches under Sam's jaw just lightly.

Sam collapses. He closes his eyes and konks his head down on Chuck's shoulder. Chuck holds the back of his head, careful not to touch his neck.

Sam's stomach growls. He's probably starving with his throat all fucked up like that.

"I'm gonna go get you something to eat," he pulls out his phone, pulls up a blank text. "Type something out that you want, I'll find... I donno. The best I can."

Sam leans back and takes the phone and types, **Home.**

Something he wants. Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph. Sam can be completely heartbreaking in five characters or less.

Chuck clears his throat. "The case isn't over yet. Cas and Dean want to finish up, they don't think they've seen the last of the vamp."

Sam nods. Types, **Peanut butter ice cream?**

"Yeah," Chuck says. "Yeah, I can do that."

Sam types more, **I'll come with you.**

"Sam, you look like shit," he shakes himself, "I mean, I don't mean to be harsh, but you got mauled."

Puppy dog eyes.

He hears Dean whine in his head, _Son of a bitch. Always with the face._

Yeah. Totally.

Chuck struggles for a second, thinking. He gets up and digs through Sam's bag.

"You're a lousy excuse for a hipster," he mumbles, finding nothing.

He runs out to the car, retrieves his own bag and grabs a scarf from his stuff. When he comes over with it, Sam gives him a dubious look.

"High school football games. They play outside. They don't televise.... They don't sell beer," he grumbles.

Sam frowns.

"Shut up, I know." Sam stays seated low and Chuck carefully loops the scarf around his neck. Sam's hands bolt up and he tries to pull away. "Stop, stop, it's either this or you walk around looking like I wring your neck on a regular basis and I get the 'how dare you' looks and, I mean, come on, it's not like I could even reach that high."

Sam smiles and touches the fabric when he's through.

"See? Not so bad. But you have to put your plaid back on over this for full hipster effect," he plucks at Sam's t-shirt, "otherwise your whole look is just baffling right now."

An unimpressed look from Sam.

"Um, good," Chuck fakes cheer. "Now, where do we get soft-serve in this awful town?"

«»

After dark, it's chilly enough that the scarf doesn't look strange and getting ice cream _definitely_ looks strange.

They drive around until they find one of those cutesy, expensive fro-yo shops. Sam texts **I can trust the ingredients** and Chuck can only look inside warily, noting that they'll be even older and more haggard-looking than the manager who is, without doubt, still in her 20s.

Chuck sighs. "Literally everyone in there is a sophomore in high school on their second date."

Sam types and shows him the screen. **I'll pay.**

Chuck wordlessly grumbles.

Sam deletes and types again. **Old fogies go on dates too.** He accompanies this with a perfectly cajoling smile.

Sooooooo, he's definitely getting a separate room because Dean still vibes on that overprotective shit and he will straight up kill Chuck for this.

A joke about putting out sticks in his throat and he grimaces. "Let's go get your damn ice cream please."

It is expensive but Chuck orders their cups and speaks to the cashier and rebuffs the upselling and Sam waves more cash and- "You could have done this just fine on your own you big faker."

Sam gives a big frowny face and makes it look like his neck really hurts.

"Fuck you and your hair," Chuck says. A teenager behind them busts out laughing.

It's colder, walking back to the car, after. And darker. Like someone knocked a streetlight out. Chuck has been filling the silence with his own voice since they left the motel. Without Sam yakking back, it's making things kinda eerie.

Chuck shivers and rubs friction over his arms, shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. Sam exits behind him and runs one big hand over Chuck's shoulders.

"Cold," Chuck says unnecessarily.

Sam nods and squints off into the dark. His hand slows on Chuck's back and, when he starts walking, he ushers Chuck along, his touch lingering.

The drive is even weird. He could swear that the lights in the rear-view are the same all the way back.

Probably because they are.

His hands are shaking.

"Um. How often are the withdrawal shakes supposed to come back?" He asks in a high voice. He doesn't look over to see Sam's response, though. He keeps driving, just trying to tough it out until they get back. He keeps babbling to fill the silence, "I know I get chills but I'm actually way freezing right now and-"

Sam tugs on his arm and points to the side of the road-

And they fucking get rear-ended.

Chuck probably screams like hell but he's trying to keep the car under control and pull off to the side-

The next hit is on the back corner, passenger side, and Chuck sees, in his periphery, Sam's head go from snapped attention to wobbling on his neck. His very wounded neck.

The car behind revs and keeps coming so Chuck swerves off the road, into the brush and, irrationally, brakes really hard.

There's a long moment. And the car is stopped-stopped-stopped. And all he can do is lift his head and look around and sweep his eyes over the dashboard lights. All he can think is, _No trails. I am **not** drunk._

Sam's arm has landed across his knee and he's unresponsive.

And the other driver is now rolling up, parking to block Chuck's car into the ditch.

The patient way it's done has Chuck unbuckling his seatbelt and reaching over, patting Sam's jacket, his pockets, scrambling for a weapon. Sam's got a huge knife in his inner jacket pocket. Chuck's hand scrambles on the cold metal. He cuts a finger. He can't care, he's crawling, reaching for exactly where he knows Sam's gun is, the grip of it familiar as it is to Sam's hand, even if he's never actually touched it before.

The fucker's at Sam's door, now, prying. The metal groans. The guy's strong but he only attempts to break the lock for a moment. He hisses, his mouth a nightmare of razor teeth, and crashes the window in. Chuck fires, unloads in the small space, deafening himself and sending the vamp shuddering back, then falling.

He realizes he's said the word, "shit," maybe 80 times in the last minute.

This is a vampire. This is a fucking vampire.

All that noise and Sam's still unconscious.

Chuck knows what has to be done. He doesn't wanna be the one to do it, but the vamp will get back up before he can call Dean or Cas and who knows how far out they are.

"I fucking HATE THIS," Chuck nearly wails. Huffs, knocks his head on the steering wheel, and unlocks his door.

He rounds the car to the sight of the vamp still hissing on the ground, clawing at the perforations in its face and neck, gasping. Chuck shot one of its eyes out.

Its neck is a mess.  
Good.

See how it feels, fuckass?

It lets go of its face clawing for his ankle and he half-dance-trips back out of the way, falls down in the bushes.

"FUCK you," he spits. He crawls back over and his hands are shaking but there should be two bullets left in the gun. He fires it, point-blank, into the vamp's hand and it's a mess of gore and bone. It spatters Chuck's knees. Over the ringing in his ears, he can hear it screech.

He keeps the last bullet. Drops the gun behind himself, raises the knife, and plunges it into the middle of the vamp's throat, nailing its other hand in place. He pulls and saws and blood and crap gets _everywhere_ until he's sawn through the neck and severed the head and there's no more noise from elsewhere. Just the ticking of the injured car and Chuck breathing and the high-pitched tone of the high ranges of his hearing giving a death knell.

He scrambles back on his butt.

 _Sam_.

He trips and skids getting up from the cold ground and guts, rounds the car, steadying himself on the metal as he goes. He climbs back in and, "Okay, okay, okay, Sam," feels for a pulse. His neck's still wrapped up, so he pinches the side of his wrist between three fingers and feels a beating.

Thank god. What the hell.

He clings to Sam's hand and he dares not move him. His fucking neck could have snapped. He could be goddamn paralyzed.

He needs to call 911--

No. There's a dead vampire next to the front tire. He needs to call Dean.

Sam's cell is in his far pants pocket. "Sorry, sorry, dammnit, Sam, I'm sorry," he babbles as he reaches into his jeans. Two numbers for Dean when he scrolls through the contacts.

Dean picks up on the second one.

"Sammy we're coming back around, you got your voice back yet?"

"This isn't- I'm not- Dean where-- I just. Sam-"

"Where are you," Dean demands.

"We were - um. Uh. Headed back. We were." He closes his eyes, puts a sticky hand to his face. Tries to remember. "There's the Burger King and then there's like three minutes of nothing until you get to the Cracker Barrel and the motel."

"Southbound?"

"I DON'T FUCKING- I- I- you expect me to know DIRECTION? Look for the fucking cars on the fucking side of the road-"

He's talking to Cas, they're speaking in numbers. The sound of the Impala powering her way back to them in the background. "Eighteen minutes out, Chuck, what's wrong with Sam?"

"Give Cas the phone."

"Goddamnit, Chuck, _what's wrong with my brother--_ "

"You can't KNOW THAT, hand the phone over and DRIVE," Chuck basically screams.

"Fucking asshole if yo--" -- "-- uck?" Cas's voice on the line with Dean still raging in the background.

Cas knows how not to panic. He can find his bright-white angelic center and get the answers required for anything without losing his shit.

Chuck knows his voice is wrecked and faint when he says, "Yeah," he grabs for Sam's hand again and knows that's his own pulse beating into his palm, but he can pretend for 17 more minutes.

"Tell me," Cas requests.

"He's not moving. He's out. His neck-- he was. I'm pretty sure it's worse. When we got hit a second time, he got flung. It was pretty sudden. I can't. I don't know about. ABOUT ANYTHING," he squeezes Sam's hand _hard_.

"Did you feel for a pulse?"

"He's got a pulse. I did that. He's fine-- I mean, he's _alive_ I just don't know if his _spine_ is fucking broken, I-"

Sam's hand squeezes his. He's so startled that the phone pops out of his hand and he goes grabbing for it, misses it twice, and it clunks to the floor, between Sam's feet.

He turns and sees Sam's eyes open.

"D-d-don't move. Don't move, Sam, you're okay. It was a crash! A fucking crash and a fucking vampire and! Jesus!" he crouches in the center console, jamming his knees on the plastic and the belt buckles. "Just don't move, don't move."

Sam blinks long. Says something that comes out as a nearly-silent wheeze.

He starts moving. "No, don't," but before Chuck can put pressure on his shoulder to keep him in place, he's unbuckling and shifting around.

A voice squawks from the phone on the floor and Sam reaches down for it, "WOULD YOU FUCKING STOP THAT?!" Chuck would shake the shit out of Sam if they both hadn't just been puréed by the other car.

Sam raises the phone to his ear and then passes it back to Chuck.

"I told him not to fucking move so so so WHATEVER," he yells into the phone.

"Sam is moving around?"

"Yeah," Chuck falls back into his seat. "He's awake. Get here anyway. I don't know what to do with the body."

"Body?"

Chuck hangs up.

Sam is unlocking the door, now, brushing glass off his lap. When he opens up, there, right where he'd set his feet, is a messily decapitated man.

His eyes slowly.  
Ever so slowly.

Swing back to take Chuck in.

He points down.  
Baffled.

"Yeah. I fucking had to do it. You were unconscious."

Sam tries to speak again, but winces, puts his hand to his neck.

Chuck's in a flurry of movement before he even knows it. Drawing Sam back into his seat, hand hovering over the wound-up scarf.

"What if you broke something? What if there's a fucking crack in your spine and when you stand up it splits in half??"

Sam rolls his eyes. He unwinds the scarf and grabs Chuck's hands. He uses the fabric to wipe the vampire gore off, then brushes at Chuck's face.

Chuck is vibrating. He's shaking like a paint mixer.

Sam picks up the phone again and texts something to Dean.

Chuck doesn't see it. His eyes are watering. He puts his palms to them and grinds the heels of his hands in.

"This has been a really long day." He sounds like he's crying but he's not.

Well, not yet.

Sam tugs on his elbow, a sympathetic look on his face.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING GIVE ME THAT," he snaps again. "You're the fucking WINCHESTER, you're supposed to be the one who murders things I can't--" his voice gets tied in a knot in his throat and chokes out.

It takes him a minute to breathe through it. "I'm not supposed to kill the fucking bad guy, that's supposed to be _you_. Don't fucking make me do that again. God, I _HATE_ this, Sam."

He hears Sam get out of the car. Hears the distant sound of passing on the northbound lane. He can't let up on the pressure on his head. His brains will probably come bursting out his eyeballs like the bullets he put in that vamp's _face_ and-

Sam is on the other side, tugging on him.

He gasps a breath and lets himself be pulled out.

Sam's arms go around his shoulders, wrap around practically his whole head and he can press his face in Sam's chest and twitch and shake.

Chuck feels Sam's chin on the top of his head and his hands flexing tight, holding him close.

Sam hugs solid, sways them just a little until the adrenaline just _falls_ out of Chuck. He feels like an ice cube burst open on the ground.

He doesn't let go when Dean's headlights sweep into the bushes and across the cars.

Chuck can see Dean's hard eyes and knows he's demanding answers and Sam just keeps hold of Chuck, walks him to the back of the Impala and opens the door. He settles Chuck to a sit. Sweeps his hands over both sides of Chuck's face.

Then he turns to deal with everything.

Through some mix of brotherly intuition and ancient Winchester sign language, Sam conveys the whole scene. It turns out the second hit crashed his head into the roof of the car and conked him out.

He only has to pull out his phone and write down his explanation when Dean won't believe that Chuck killed the vamp they'd been after this whole time.

One reverent, " _Dude_ ," conveys his grudging admiration.

"Nice grouping on the shots," he calls over to Chuck. "All of 'em in the head and neck," he looks over the car and smiles.

Chuck gives a weary thumbs up and Dean perks at discovering the splayed hand, destroyed on the grass from a close-range bullet.

"Too bad about your car, though," Dean comments, looking at the bumper, the glass everywhere.

Castiel shrugs. Points to the one the vamp had been driving. "I don't know," he says, "it looks like that might serve as an upgrade."

And that's the story of how Chuck got a Porsche.

«»

Sam bundles Chuck into the motel bed and sends Dean and Cas to the other room, closing the door behind them. They _definitely_ saw Sam hugging Chuck, and they have _definitely_ not been complaining when Sam's free time is spent more and more frequently away from the bunker. Chuck knows that Dean's always suspected his brother wasn't straight and there's a whole box of snakes in the way Dean deals with his own sexuality and the way he thinks Sam interprets it. But, even though he's probably been getting closer to Cas -- even though they're probably already humping in that other room -- he doesn't know what Dean's gonna be like if this _thing_ goes where Chuck thinks it's going.

For now, anyway, Sam and Chuck have the room to themselves. It's quiet but not too quiet. Sam doesn't seem tired at all after his terrifying little coma. He wanders all around the room just doin' stuff.

Sam puts on different pants and goes to brush his teeth and rubs gels into the skin of his neck and whatnot. Each time he walks by, he touches Chuck's head. Runs his fingers through his hair or just pats.

Finally he sits on the bed next to Chuck with a box of ammo and reloads stuff for a while.

A bullet rolls around the bedspread between Chuck in his bundle and Sam's knee. He unwinds his hands from the covers to retrieve it and hand it up.

When his hand is empty, he drops it to Sam's knee and just leaves it there. He watches his hand on Sam's jeans. It shifts as he reaches for things, checks his email on his phone, jiggles his foot off the side of the mattress.

Chuck must fall asleep for a while because when he blinks, Sam is in a different shirt and he's clicking the lamps off. He comes to crouch at the side of the bed.

He reaches out and lays his fingers against the fever-warm, healing skin at Sam's neck.

"You should sleep. Your body repairs itself when you sleep. Maybe you'll be able to talk in the morning," he slurs a little. Sam nods and he can feel it in the muscles under his fingers. Chuck has a new appreciation for how much muscle and sinew holds your head up at the top of your body all day long.

He cut through the neck of the vamp that did this to Sam.

"I don't wanna do that again. It's a lot less work being the damsel in distress, Sam. That's more what I was built for."

Sam's laugh is almost silent except for his breath. He lays his hand on the side of Chuck's head again and his thumb sweeps by Chuck's eye. 'Goodnight,' his lips say.

And Chuck thinks he says, "Goodnight," too, probably, but is half asleep when he does.

«»

IHOP for breakfast. Awful coffee.  
Chuck would happily BATHE in this coffee.

He shares the side of the booth with Sam who only isn't complaining because he has no voice. They got him a smoothie and mostly they're here to indulge Chuck's sick need for coffee that tastes like desperation and to get Dean his grease fix. Cas sits opposite Chuck with his own decorative glass of untouched OJ.

Sam and Dean are having one of those totally fluent conversations that require no actual words and which Chuck is supposed to pretend like he doesn't understand.

Even Cas understands. His eyes narrow at Dean until he just yanks his bacon off his plate and says, "I think they could use the time."

He gives the bacon back when Dean's shoulders drop and he agrees.

Sam is going home with Chuck, even though Dean would prefer to keep hovering over Sam until he's healed up.

"Yeah, okay," Dean says into his own mug. He drains it and then motions with it, smiling. "Holy shit. I almost forgot. Didn't you tell Chuck about Becky?"

Sam's plastic smoothie cup hits the tabletop with a wet clap.

That requires zero exposure to Winchester mannerisms to understand.

"He didn't tell you?" Dean asks, laughing. "Woah. I mean. Wow."

"Uh. Okay," for Sam's sake, he should help divert Dean's attention. Or choose not to indulge him. He's about to say, 'I don't really care,' when Dean says:

"They got married!" and chortles with laughter.

Chuck is completely confused by this joke for a long moment. Then his eyes slide to Sam and Sam is covering his mouth with both hands, staring at Dean like he just watched him curbstomp a kitten.

Chuck locates oxygen somewhere in his body and exhales.

"Holy."  
Chuck puts down his coffee.  
"Shit."

Dean laughs again, seriously enjoying himself.

"Yeah, it was-- well. It was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life at the time. And I was sure he'd finally lost his fucking marbles. But I just stood there. And they were like 'you're a witness' and they got married in Vegas."

Sam hasn't moved a single millimeter. He hasn't blinked.

"Sam was all talking about how I just had to get used to the idea of him being married and in love and Becky was-"

Chuck gets up. Walks away from the table. Walks back to the table. Fumbles with his wallet. Tosses $12 into his scrambled eggs. Walks away from the table. And walks out the door.

«»

He's a state away before he pulls into a shopping center and turns off the car and sits in the quiet for a second before shouting, "ARE YOU FUCKING. KIDDING ME." at the top of his lungs.

It's been a while. There are two missed calls, two voice messages, and six texts on his phone.

It takes him five minutes of staring at the dashboard before he looks at the phone again and unlocks it.

**Please answer your phone.**

**Please text me back.**

**Please don't make me write this to you in a text message.**

**I'm going to kill pretty much everybody.**

**PLEASE PLEASE dont make me write this in txt.**

**It was a witch it was annulled it did not happen I was druggedplease answer me**

A new text appears as he's re-reading the string for a fourth time.

**I am such a fucking sorry sack of shit.**

Becky Rosen.

Chuck thinks about Becky for a while.

He hasn't had the misfortune of hearing from her in quite some time. Whatever impression he'd left that he was dead, he admits, he let it permeate just a little.

And he was careful. Nothing came looking for him. Even if his paranoia told him otherwise.

Becky Rosen.

She'd been a shitty girlfriend. They shared a lot of interests. None of those interests were "functioning in real life as a couple."

One of those interests was cosplay and she crossed so many lines before he couldn't handle her anymore that he really only ever hired people for sex after that.

No surprises when you were the paying participant.

With Becky, it was brief and.

He'd say "intense" but more just creepy.

And more than a little of her interest had actually been in his books instead of him. Long before he abandoned his computer, she'd gotten in and read parts of the unpublished works.

_It was a witch.  
It was annulled._

She'd been the monster of the week, maybe.

That doesn't make him feel any better.

_Married._

He opens the car door and sets his feet on the pavement and listens to the birds for a while.

Look:

If he'd met Sam some indeterminate time down the road. Or seen him in passing. And he'd been married. He would have thought it was a good thing that happened to a good person. He would have thought that, finally, somebody _saw_. Someone recognized how amazing Sam is.

If he had seen Becky on his arm?

Would he be able to be happy for Sam?

He is completely blood-red biased against Becky. There's no seeing through the haze of this revelation right now. Not when his own experience with her was of being used in rather dramatic fashion.

He needs more information.  
And, at this moment, can't handle the possibility of more information.

Refocus on Dean, now.

He'd said this, at this moment, for a reason.

Dean never thought much of Chuck. Though he hadn't shown him the outward distrust that Sam had.

But, when they first met, while Sam had said he didn't trust a thing about him, he still asked Chuck how much he'd seen. If he'd seen the demon blood. He had said he didn't trust Chuck, but he came to _know_ the unavoidable truth of the whole prophet thing. And when Chuck had tried to have words for Sam, had tried to explain the path the Winchesters were on, according to his visions, Sam had listened. He had seemed to trust it. Enough to basically invite Lilith into his room, nearly unprotected.

Things were changing again, the mistrust shifting in different directions. Dean had been giving Chuck cold looks since he came up to Minnesota. Chuck had assumed it was because Sam didn't need _just Dean_ 100% of the time.

But this revelation at this moment. Dean's glee in telling the story.  
Is this misdirection?

Chuck prods Sam toward the idea that Dean and Cas are getting together, so in defense of his manhood or whatever, Dean tells Chuck something that he knows he doesn't wanna hear. Something that could make him run screaming from any association with Sam. Because Sam must have admitted something or given it away in his behavior. Maybe he said something. Or Dean recognizes _The Look_ from how Sam was with Amelia or whoever else.

Yeah.  
So Dean blows it wide open just because he's the big brother and he can.

But it's been _months_ , now. It's been months of Chuck and Sam growing to trust each other. Trying to be good friends to one another.

And he knows he's attracted to Sam.  
And he knows that Sam is deliberately finding more ways to spend time with him.

Chuck is very calm.

He can think this out.

The phone rings and it's Dean's number again.

He doesn't need Sam to be interpreted to him right now.  
He doesn't need Dean's vindictive little bullshit.  
He doesn't need Cas's understanding.

He answers anyway.

He hears Dean close a door behind himself. "Chuck?"

"Speaking."

"Fuck," Dean says under his breath. "I um. I need to explain something to you."

Chuck is quiet so long, Dean says his name again. It sounds like he's closing himself in the car.

"I'm still here," Chuck replies.

"Lemme explain. About the Becky thing."

"First, can you explain to me why you'd do that to Sam?" Chuck asks, plainly and openly curious. "Because you're all about wanting to see your brother be happy until that happiness involves somebody else."

Dean chews on that. "I hope you're not talking about Becky there because-"

"You know what I'm fucking talking about," Chuck snaps. "You don't want to have feelings for _an angel_ so when Sam and I get close you get to decide to freak us the shit out?? This is YOUR decision to make? _Right at the moment_ when Sam can't say anything for himself? Right when he's dependent upon us and he needs you?"

Nothing but the sound of the front seat as Dean shifts. He's quiet so long that Chuck knows he's honestly considering it. He knows what the landscape looks like inside Dean's head when he has his mistakes categorized and laid out neat in front of him. When he takes the time to look in their eyes. Then, "Yeah. You're right. That's on me. I fucked up."

"Don't I know it."

Dean's silent.

"Is Sam okay?" Chuck asks through a slump and a sigh.

"He's freaked out," Dean admits, properly fucking ashamed.

He lets it sit for a minute.

"Alright." Chuck exhales. Heavy sigh. "Explain the Becky thing to me. With maybe half the amusement you actually feel about it if you could just find it within yourself to tone it down for twenty minutes," he shakes his fist at Dean even if he can't see it. He beheaded a goddamn vampire with this fist yesterday. He destroyed the thing that wounded Sam.

He does not enjoy the story.

«»

The next day, Chuck's home and they drop Sam off at his door.

He lets him in and Sam looks tired and sore and small. They sit on the couch in silence. Sam keeps playing with his phone, opening blank messages and deciding not to type anything.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," Chuck says.

Sam gives a confused look.

"The whole thing with. Becky," he explains, motioning vaguely.

Sam looks flat-out _miserable_.

"Aw, stop it, come on," Chuck rolls his head on his shoulders. "You don't have anything to feel bad about, Sam."

Sam taps on his phone and types, **I should have told you**.

"It was none of my business," Chuck shrugs. "And it all ended up with no difference. Like it didn't even happen. But she fucked you up and she drugged you and she... fu-. She _forced herself_ on you and that's," his eyes boggle, "traumatic."

"It is your business," Sam croaks, nearly too quiet to hear. He winces, after, and his hand hovers over his throat.

Chuck hops off the couch and scrounges around for a pad of paper and a pen.

He hands them over but Sam can't seem to think of what to say.

After a while he writes, **I'm sorry you had to fight the vamp.**

This isn't working at all.

"Sam, you can be sorry for everything in the damn world. And I know you actually have that much sympathy in your," he motions, "GIANT body. But you don't have to load everything onto yourself."

Sam shakes his head and starts writing, **You were** \--

Chuck takes the paper back.

He stands up and puts it on the couch and sits on it.

Sam tosses the pen on the table.

He doesn't have tea to make to help treat Sam's sore throat. He doesn't have anything to offer. But he decided to play ball on the friendship and now he's stuck here just living in it. With no idea how to actually make it into something that improves Sam's life.

He's uncultured. He never leaves the house. He's an alcoholic who doesn't drink anymore. He's a bad writer. He had a purpose and he tossed it away.

And if he thinks of the way Sam's arms engulfed him after the vamp attack one more fucking time he's gonna lose his shit because he only had it once and now he misses it _constantly_.

It's been like _two_ days.

"We can start over," Sam rasps, sounding like agony wrapped in misery.

And it sounds like the best option at the time, so Chuck says, "Okay."

«»

Starting over is bullshit.

Once Sam leaves he doesn't come back for a week. Maybe that would have been normal.

Two weeks. Yeah, might still have been normal

Three weeks. TWENTY ONE DAYS. The better part of a month.

Starting over- did he mean starting over from _scratch?_ from when they didn't know each other? From when Chuck was growing up a lonely, awkward kid doomed to a future with prophecy and car wrecks and deleting his social life in favor of isolation?

At three weeks and one day, Chuck isn't being very patient. He does his job, he's at a Royals game, and when the beer guy comes by, he sees the foam at the top of the plastic cup and he doesn't understand why he isn't drinking. He's _starting over_ , right?

That's bitter.  
That was a very bitter and childish thought.

But the man walks away with his money and he's sitting in the stands with a beer in his hand.

He walks away from the game with notes. He walks away from three cups stacked under the seat he'd occupied. He walks to his car with a buzz on.

He drives the back roads home and when he sees it at the side of the road, he pulls into the lot of a farmer's market that's empty for the season and stumbles to the side and vomits against the fence.

Chuck sits down with his back against the front tire of the Porsche. Sobs heave out of him but he rubs at his eyes, angry and angry and just fucking angry.

COLD BEER flashes on a sign down the road from the dark lot.

And why not, right? Why not?

Probably because Sam got him sober and he's so in love with Sam that his chest hurts. He thought it was from sleeping on his right side all of a sudden. Waking up every morning to see the empty side of the bed. He unwound from the sheets a week ago and realized how tightly-wrapped he'd been, curled on his side. And his chest hurts from the squishing.

And his chest hurts because Sam married somebody he didn't want to and that makes him feel like he committed a crime.

Sam did nothing wrong. He shouldn't feel that way. He was maybe too trusting, maybe not quick enough to recognize he was being drugged. But what kind of asshole blames someone for that? Chuck doesn't wanna blame him.

He just wants Sam _back_.

His mouth tastes like beer and bile. His legs slip to splay out in front of him. He claws his pockets for his phone.

"This is Sam, leave a message. Or just text me, please."

"Hi," his voice sounds wet, he sounds like a wreck. "Please call me. Back. Please call me back. I."

_I drank. I'm three beers deep on a possible 17-course buffet because there are liquor stores and gas stations and bars all up and down this street and I'm 40 minutes from home._

He hangs up.

Thinks very hard about climbing into his car.

The phone rings in his hand.

"Hey," Sam says, voice still raspy but he got his volume back.

"Hey," Chuck closes his eyes.

"Um. Are you okay?"

"Can you come around? Any time. Um. Soon?"

There's nothing in the background, no other sounds to indicate what Sam's doing with his time. Which makes it seem like he's probably in his quiet little room at home. Doing everything except driving to visit Chuck.

He's silent for a long while.

"I donno. I'm not too close to where you're at right now."

Chuck nods.

"Okay. I'm sorry."

"S'okay. I mean. Sorry. For what?"

"Oh," Chuck searches the sky. "A truly incredible range of things. I'm sorry."

"Chuck," Sam starts to admonish, "you've got nothing-"

"I've been," he stops, but he's pretty sure Sam knows how that sentence ends.

"Chuck?"

"I'm not drunk. I can drive. I mean. That's always what we tell ourselves, right? That we're sober enough to drive or that we drive better when we've had a few and we. I'm. I guess. I had."

"Chuck," Sam repeats. "Are you someplace safe?"

"Not even remotely. I have nobody in this town, but I've got nobody in every town, I mean, I assume you're in a town and I don't even have you, so I'm nowhere near home and I'm in a super dark parking lot. I'm sitting on a bundle of weeds in the cracked asphalt. And that is just _so me_ , you know?"

"The..... sitting on weeds or the- I'm not sure. I. Chuck. I want you to hang up and call a cab."

"Nah," he waves a hand. This is about as sober as he ever got when he was drinking. He knows how to handle where he's at right now and he's almost edging back to the point of apathy where he'll be able to not care that Sam is nowhere near him and doesn't ever intend to be.

Maybe he can get another drink and then another and just ride this feeling out until he remembers how not to care 24/7. He's starting to think he lost a valuable life skill.

"Chuck. Tell me where you are."

He wants to say something nasty. Instead he says, "I'm gonna walk across to the gas station and get coffee and by the time I finish it, I'll be good to drive."

Sam seems to have nothing to say to that. He tries, but all that comes out is. "Well, you could-" and nothing. No other thoughts.

"I must have interrupted you. I didn't mean to freak you out. I'll be fine. I'll talk to you some other time," and he hangs up.

He climbs to his feet. Stands. Calm.  
He walks over and pukes on the fence again.

He wipes his mouth. Washes it out with the dregs of melted ice from a cup of soda he left in the car. Spits it to the pavement.

Sam's phone calls again. He hits "answer," he hits "end call."

He's half-way between this internal Solid Place and hurting. He chooses to go to A Solid Place and he starts the car. Drives home without incident.

It's when he gets home with a bottle of gin that he doesn't have to be in A Solid Place anymore. He doesn't have to stand up straight or pretend he's alright. He lets the booze decide where and what and how he's gonna be.

«»

Three more days. And when Sam shows up, "Just wanna check in. Can't really stay. Heading to a job," he comes baring coffee. Chuck invites him in.

Sam's neck and throat are about half-recovered.

Chuck says he looks good. Sam goes very still and Chuck has to say, "I mean, it looks way better."

(Starting over is bullshit.)

"Chuck," Sam stands there and he looks like he's in love and he looks like he's sorry for it.  
"Do you want me to go?" he offers, "I can just _go_."

"No," Chuck says on the end of kind of a desperate, hysterical laugh. "No."

He tries to think of something to say or do or- fuck it.

"I don't want you to go. I hate it when you go. It's quiet and I get lonely. I don't care how long it takes for you to come back. Just," he shrugs, "just come back. Jesus, Sam, you're, like. My only friend. You're. The best. And. No. Just. Starting over is bullshit," he mumbles.

Sam looks to the bag of recycling in the corner. At least two empty bottles right up against the plastic, labels standing out prominently.

Sam is standing at the kitchen counter, not tasting the hot coffee he came in with. He sets it down and moves forward. He takes the coffee he gave to Chuck out of his hands and wraps him up again, tucks Chuck into his body and Chuck can't very well pretend he doesn't need it.

He thinks he can feel Sam's mouth against the top of his head. He doesn't really know. It might be wishful thinking.

Sam is shaken up. And Chuck is shaken up.

Chuck's reluctance to be near the supernatural is as much to blame as anything. The fact that he doesn't want to fight or get caught up in danger only feeds Sam's certainty that he's toxic and he can't draw Chuck into his life. Thinking that he lied to Chuck and that it mattered makes it worse.

The Becky thing doesn't matter. It does. not. matter.

And, no. Chuck doesn't like the hunting. But Sam likes it, is sincerely fucking good at it, and will keep doing it.

He wants to stay in Sam's life. So that's what he's signing up for. It wasn't a choice he just made right now. He clawed his way there a while ago.

"Do you wanna go to lunch or something?" Sam offers. "Let's go eat."

"When do you have to leave town by?"

Sam is silent for a long moment. "I was just. Giving you a fake deadline. So you didn't feel like you had to let me stay in your house for that long," he explains, halting and stuttering.

Chuck likes the rumble of speech in Sam's chest. He sighs and Sam holds him tighter.

"You don't have to be back," he says.

He feels Sam nod.

"I have a better idea."

«»

He was right. Sam was exhausted. He needed a nap. They both did. They both tied themselves in knots. They both needed sleep.

Naps are great, anyway. Everybody needs naps.

He wakes up with Sam's head on his shoulder.

He won't touch Sam when he can't say it's okay. Sam's had enough of that in his life. He can't help but wanna make Sam feel safe here. Maybe he won't pull away if they can get their friendship back in balance. If Chuck can show him the vamp thing and the Becky thing haven't changed that they feel comfortable around each other.

Sam's phone vibrates in his bag.

But what if he violates their friendship _just a little_ and fucking stuffs his phone down the garbage disposal?

It buzzes a second round. And a third round.

Dean could be in trouble.

"Sammy," he says, soft and reluctant.

Sam blinks awake but doesn't move.

Except for his hand. Which comes up and lands on Chuck's stomach.

"Uh," Chuck says in a strangled whisper, "your phone is, um, was ringing. Like a lot."

His thoughts are suddenly way too heated to explain why that even matters.

Short buzzes. Text after text after text arriving.

"Crap," Sam sounds like he could use twenty more hours of sleep.

He rolls to rub his face against Chuck's shirt and curse. The blood rushes back into Chuck's arm and... that's... mildly painful wow.

The phone buzzes another call.

"Goddamnit I'm getting there," Sam gripes.

Chuck's laugh is brief and edged with hysteria as Sam's hand shifts to his hip so he can lean over him and the edge of the bed and dig the phone out.

"Charlie?" He waits for her to speak. "Yeah, alright. Yeah, okay, I'm on it. Gimme-" he looks at the alarm clock. "Shit. I'll call when I'm on the road. Yeah. Don't let him run until then. 'Kay, bye."

He drops the phone unceremoniously.

"Duty calls?"

Sam leans up and hovers over him.

He stares for what feels like minutes.

"Can I come back?" Sam swallows. "Soon?"

Chuck nods and his hands twitch. He could reach up right now and push his fingers into Sam's hair. Run his hands up his pumped-as-fuck arms. Press his fingers into his mouth.

And stuff.

"Soon as you can- _want_. Soon as you want," he nods again.

Sam's thumb moves over his side briefly. He smiles at Chuck's shocked little inhale.

The phone goes off again.

Sam rolls his eyes and drops his head to Chuck's chest.

And he can't handle it anymore so he cups Sam's ears and tries very hard not to roll his hips.

Sam gets going soon after.

He turns to leave and turns back. He holds Chuck in a hug for another long while. That's a nice development. Whatever he can have, Chuck'll take it. Sam tried to inconspicuously check the fridge before he left. And on his way out, he grabs the bag of recyclables and ties it up, taking it with him.

Chuck's hands will shake when he's alone. Not until the night, when he hasn't had a drink in a full day. The rest of the week will be unpleasant.

Until then, when Sam's out the door, on the road and the apartment is quiet once more, Chuck crawls back into bed and beats off _furiously_. He imagines Sam between his legs and he moans and chants his name and he comes babbling about how he loves him.

It's entirely possible that this is the first time he's told himself in so many words.

There are like seven million ways he could fuck this up.

«»

Four days later, Sam comes back. He calls before he does. He says, "I'm an hour out."

"Oh," Chuck mutes the commentators on the television.

"Is that okay?"

"Ye-yeah." He lets it sit for a long moment. "I'm glad. You wanna pick something up? Like burgers or something?"

Sam's too quiet for a long moment. "Isn't there some kind of dressing you like?"

Yes.  
Jesus, yes.  
Salads.

Sam Winchester is going to force-feed him salads to try and keep his abused, alcoholic body alive just a little longer.

They've finally reached That Point. He feels so loved. He is radiating it. He will take chipotle ranch, please and thank you.

Sam sighs. He will have to build up to assaulting Chuck with light vinaigrettes.

«»

Sam's telling him how there's nothing to do in this part of Texas except wait for the killers to attack the locals again.

Chuck is on the phone with him, wandering around his house as they talk. He flips on and off the lights in the bathroom and notices, for the first time since Sam left again, "Hey, you left your good brush here," he taps the handle. "In case you were looking for it."

"Yeah, I know."

And they're _dead quiet_.

He can practically _feel_ Sam on the other end.

"Oh my god," Chuck says out loud. Sam left his good brush here. He left a bag of laundry, too.

Holy shit.

Now that he thinks about it, that's not the "need to do" laundry bag, that's the "folded and ready" laundry bag.

"What happened?" he hears Sam ask, though in reference to what, he doesn't know.

"Happened?"

"You just said 'oh my god' and then you disappeared?"

"I didn't. Oh. I just. I saw something. On tv. It's on mute. And I saw something. And I remembered something."

"Oh."

"Yeah, sorry, zoned out for a second, there."

"Chuck, you know I can always tell when you're scrolling the internet when you're on the phone with me. If you're bored you can just tell me. We can talk when something's new."

 _Oh my god_ , Chuck thinks, _he doesn't know that I know_.

"I'm not bored. I'd just. Prefer to speak to you in person. You know, I know that you're. Away. And busy. I just."

He considers that Sam also hasn't clued in to the fact that Chuck _lives_ for the 90-minute phone conversations where they don't actually talk much but act like they're just hanging out in the same room together.

"I was just thinking about how much you suck at life," Chuck says.

"Yeah, I'm fairly awful at it."

"When are you coming home?"

"I can't imagine this'll be more than another week. If it's six days I'll be surprised. They're boring but not patient."

"Okay." Chuck is _actually_ going to die, in the dramatic teenager tradition of the word. Because Sam thinks of Chuck's dinky apartment as home. "I miss you. And I ate all your hummus."

"I told you it was good."

«»

Dean calls him at the end of the hunt.

"I'm sending Sam to you to get him off my fucking nerves."

"Uh huh."

Dean is very quiet for being the person who initiated the call in the first place.

"What do you mean 'uh huh.' I didn't. I didn't say anything."

Oh geeze.

" _Really??_ " Chuck challenges. "Wow. That was so transparent I felt a stiff breeze barrel right through."

"Shut up."

"You know, they only made me a prophet, and I don't even know how. I don't think I'm allowed to officiate things."

"Shove a fucking-- Just shut the fuck up, Chuck. Holy shit. Who even asked you?"

"You're sending your brother to me so you can continue christening every surface in the bunker. I can tell. I can tell just from your Dean-ness."

"I liked you better when you were dead."

"Why? How? How was I more useful to you when you couldn't dump your brother off and have sex with Castiel?"

Dean grinds his teeth and it is audible.

"Dean. You're one of my favorite people in the world," he says this because it's true. He isn't just saying it to continue getting on his nerves. Dean saved the world, too. Dean had a weird kinda trust in Chuck from the very beginning. And Dean, at least, always remembers that there's only so much they can hide from Chuck because Chuck sort of owns the chess board. He doesn't just know all the moves before they're made, he knows their very methods and internal processes. He has not forgotten the things he's seen. And he saw deeper than he ever would have wished.

He thought he was making it all up. Dragging his poor creations through the mud after he built them up from scratch and loved them. He thought he was killing his darlings. 

He was never that creative.

"You just like me because I'm letting you lay the mack on my little brother."

"I have mack to lay down," Chuck says with mock wonder, "Incredible."

"I don't need to tell yo-"

"You don't need to tell me anything."

"Chuck. I shouldn't have said that shit. I should have let Sammy deal with it on his own time. I suspected something. But, man. I didn't know how deep it ran," he says, quiet.

"Yeah, I know. I didn't, either. I didn't think. That he would ever." Chuck isn't ready for this conversation. As comfortable as Sam is with him, again, he also lives with the reality that everything he knows could become a blazing hellscape in an instant because powerful motherfuckers share this planet with us. And he comes from a family whose name alone pisses them off. Sam might still pull himself away, thinking he's doing the right thing.

Always wanting to do the right thing.

"You know you were always right about him, right?" Chuck marvels. "I'll take him however I can have him. I just. You just need someone that _good_ and that fucking _awesome_ in your life." He breathes deep. "Dean? You raised a really great kid."

"God," Dean's laugh is thin. He has to pull it back together for a minute. Or risk giving away the overwhelming goddamn emotion that's clogging up his throat. "You know? I guess I did alright."

«»

Chuck yawns to awareness and checks the clock. Yeah, okay. 10:44 a.m. is a decent time to get out of bed on a Sunday.

Sam isn't here. He wonders if Sam's getting ready to head out.

Chuck closes his eyes again. He hears a little movement out in the main room and it's enough. Enough to know he's not alone yet.

He doesn't want to be alone this week.

He's kinda fucking sick of being alone, actually. Now that he has something to compare it to.

Sam's awful quiet out there.

Chuck heaves himself out of bed and wanders down the short hall.

Sam is seated next to the table. He doesn't wanna complain that he always bumps his knees under it so he sits kinda splayed to the side. But he leans his elbow on the table and yawns over a cup of coffee that's still too hot to touch.

Chuck turns to the sink and picks through the dirty dishes because, in this very instant, he can't watch the morning sun slant in the tiny window and light up the brass color in Sam's hair and think about him leaving.

Sam will be on the road again in a few hours. He'll add a hundred more miles to those endless lengths of his life. And he will be restless at home and cramped here. He will never find a motel bed that fits just right. He will stay hovering, probably for years, outside of Dean and Cas's new relationship, and on the boundaries of Chuck's life, thinking he's not allowed in past the door. Thinking that everyone's just being nice giving him a seat at the table and tomorrow he should be back in the car, off to wherever.

It feels like wearing a seatbelt, like a grip of tension across Chuck's body. Sam, sleepy and reciting his list of stuff to pack. Telling himself he's gotta leave.

He'll water the plants on the windowsill with a drinking glass before he goes. He'll check to make sure Chuck's got food in the fridge, then snag a cold spring roll to eat on his way out. He won't leave without saying goodbye, even if Chuck takes forever in the shower. Sam waits to wrap around him one more time rather than hollering through the door.

Chuck instantly loses his nerve from something he didn't know he needed nerve for.

He picks up his good coffee mug and washes and scrubs it clean and rinses his hands. He turns to the carafe to fill his cup and Sam made the coffee. He woke up early on a Sunday because he still thinks he has to make himself scarce and he made the coffee.

Chuck has no idea what he's doing but his hands put the mug down and push it away from the edge of the counter.

He doesn't prepare himself any more than that. Sam is low in his chair and sprawled where he's slumped there. But still. He's gonna have to do this.

Chuck pretty much climbs Sam's legs and sits on his lap. By the time he settles, it's safe to say that Sam's well awake and shocked still beneath him.

Chuck can see his name coming to Sam's lips and chooses to just kiss him instead. Gross, stale morning breath and unsure of why or what or how or if he's about to get carefully let down. He just kisses Sam. The bulk of him sleepy-soft and warm and untensing beneath Chuck's thighs.

Sam's hands grip his ass and pull him in tight before he really kisses back, opens his mouth and starts breathing hard.

He maybe doesn't know what to do with all this power. Chuck's hands fall from Sam's face and trip down his shoulders, his huge muscles, and there is a _very big_ , a _very intense_ , rough-and-tumble man between Chuck's legs.

That's new information. When he thinks about it that way, he wants to open his fucking pants and dive right in, though, if he knows Sam--

and he _knows_ Sam--

it's gonna be dating and heavy make-outs and blue balls first.

Jesus, Sam can kiss. He wants to give him more. He could just let himself go limp and let Sam scoop him up and move him how he wants. The chair isn't wide enough and he's got no stability under his knees except that Sam holds him there, so he won't topple.

Sam breaks away with his eyes closed, still kissing and then trying to talk at the same time. Trying to say Chuck's name with his lips still attached.

Chuck pulls back and pushes his fingers into Sam's hair, holds him close. "Shh," he says, "don't go today. Don't go today."

Sam is practically rocking them when he dips and kisses into Chuck's neck.

"Yeah, okay," his voice a plucked string, thin and disbelieving. Sam's arms come up and wrap around him, engulf him almost. He lifts his head to ask. "Please?"

And Chuck keeps kissing him until he gets enough. Until he doesn't ask anymore and the mug that Chuck's elbow knocks into is just lukewarm.

A text message ping from the bedroom. But Sam's busy nuzzling his head under Chuck's chin; Chuck's busy carding his fingers through Sam's hair and discovering something that feels weirdly like peace. Actual peace. The muscles in his legs are starting to burn, keeping a grip where he sits. But he's not ready to move. 

Sunday's supposed to be hockey and college football. Chuck taking notes and throwing together a couple columns to sell. Writing for blogs, now, too. Poking at the statistics and criticizing coaching choices.

Sam's fingers start to knead into the too-tense muscles of Chuck's back and a grumble dissolves into a moan.

He knows what today is gonna look like, instead of waving Sam off in the parking lot and listening to the drone of commentators.

He leans back and Sam keeps him from slipping. "Couch."

Sam kisses under his jaw and up to his mouth. "Lemme make you breakfast first."

"Nah," Chuck starts letting go and Sam droops. "Couch," he repeats and turns and crashes his hip into the corner of the table really goddamn hard. "FUCKING ow."

"Geeze, Chuck," Sam starts reaching for him again but he hobbles away and around the couch. Plops down still rubbing the stinging bruise-to-be on his side.

Sam clunks down beside him and it's instantly awkward. Like ten minutes before when they were friends sharing a too-small space. Sam is side-eyeing him, growing confused.

Chuck kinda throws his hands up and lets them drop. "I was coming over here to make out."

" _OH_ ," Sam's eyes widen. "Okay."

"What, did you think we were gonna talk about it?"

"I kinda want to," he sounds guilty.

"I know," Chuck sighs out. "I know all the time, I know. But your lap is under-utilized as a makeout platform and I have a list of priorities."

Sam finally turns to look at him. Processing.

"Fantasies. When I said 'priorities' I meant- I meant fantasies," he spins his hand, "like this is the part where you yank me over and-"

Okay, so Sam gets it pretty quick, reaches over, hauls Chuck into his lap, and Chuck spends pretty much the whole time revisiting memories and stroke material, relighting the flame under each. Every time the visions showed him Sam hauling a smaller body around, wrapping legs around himself, lifting them for a better angle, enveloping them in fucking hugs-- all of it. The soppy romantic stuff and the damsel in distress shit and the whole motif where Sam's just this huge, powerful _force_ trying to cloak the little things he loves from harm. He's having a tough time wading through all the fluff to get near the more hardcore stuff but it isn't his fault, obviously. It's Sam's big, gentle hands cradling his body and the give-give-give of his mouth, the way he almost physically apologizes for the moments when he finally _takes_. He pours himself into every shift of them together. Sam's generosity as a lover is kinda fucking _overwhelming_ and while Chuck's not exactly looking forward to busting in his shorts after just ten more minutes of this, he is looking forward to repeat performances.

He never really wrote porn because he didn't feel very original when trying to. He likes the basics. He likes short, rough sessions. Lots of kissing and foreplay and then coming too quick and falling dead asleep all over each other, snoring and sweat cooling. Waking up achy.

It's so good. The simple stuff is just so good.

It may not sound exciting from the outside but he's a big fan.

He leans across Sam's lap, one long, luxurious stretch while Sam sucks teeth marks that his shirt collar will rub against and drive him nuts.

Sam compensates, keeps him steady by curling his arms around Chuck, running a hand down, squeezing the back of his thigh.

It is only Sam's solid stubbornness that keeps them at the knife-edge. That keeps their clothes on. They don't talk about it. They mute the tv at the breaks and commercials and come back to the game when they're dehydrated or Sam gets another text, Dean bugging him about breaking pattern and not heading back to the bunker like he normally does at around this time.

It's only after dinner, when Sam barrels into him and lifts him and tosses him on the couch and dives down for his mouth that he's like 90% sure this is gonna end with Sam ripping his pants off three weeks earlier than the best-case scenario.

But they don't have sex. And it's good, anyway.

And crawling into bed that night is even better. Because he's never had someone let him sleep in their arms before. And for a high-strung, anxiety-prone bastard like Chuck, there really is no sleep experience superior to dozing off, wrapped up protected in the muscles of the man who can't stop saving the world.

«»

Chuck's used to sober mornings by now. It's not disorienting anymore to know exactly where he passed out.

His leg is thrown over Sam's.

How strange. The limbs you use to walk and sit and knock into corner tables when you're running late.

Their legs are skin-on-skin in the dark of early morning and that's part of what means they're suddenly together now. Not a prospect Chuck had ever seriously envisioned and there's the sun rising on Sam's shoulder, leading to his arm, and his arm holds Chuck close.

He doesn't have to wait long for Sam to wake up which is great because he's gonna have to pee soon. It's on hold though, when they're silently staring for a few full, loaded minutes before Sam just says, "Please?" again and waits for Chuck to bestow a kiss like a reward. Like, _Good job sleeping Sam, you did well. You can put your tongue in my mouth for a while_.

It's really absurd if he thinks about it like it's normal?

So he just has to keep being baffled by it.

"How the hell did this happen?" He asks when he gets his breath back.

"You literally initiated it, so..." Sam trails off.

Well, yes, _obviously_ , Chuck's bewilderment is his own fault.

Sam shakes loose and then climbs on top of him and tucks himself around him until Chuck really has to leave to go pee.

He climbs back in, after, and Sam wedges him in again and doesn't let him move for a long time. He presses in over Chuck's back and kisses between his shoulders. Sam hikes his shirt up and thumbs over the bruise on his hip that he got in the kitchen.

"That table is short and pointy," he says, finally denouncing it aloud.

"So am I," Chuck grumbles into the sheets.

"But I _like_ you," Sam speaks into his ear and tucks his arms around him. "There's a place for _my knees_ with you," he hooks their legs. He tangles their fingers for a while. He is a huge cuddly puppy.

After a while of pressing close and being promisingly intrusive without it actually leading anywhere, Sam finds the scar on Chuck's head, where he cracked it open in the car wreck. Chuck used to know all of Sam's scars, before he ever touched him, but when he got yanked back up to the surface from hell, he was all scrubbed clean. He's not so familiar with where the new ones are. He spots one occasionally. 

Sam runs his fingers over where Chuck's head was sewn shut. He lets Chuck go and leans over him, tracing tracing tracing the lines, frowning. So Chuck explains. He shows him the scars along his right side. Arms and legs. Where his knee got fucked up.

Chuck's stomach is growling for breakfast and he's begging it to shut the fuck up because Sam's hand curves over his knee again and again, fingers sometimes coming up to brush over his inner thigh.

Sam is staring, intense. This is going to lead to conversations, not sex. So Chuck complains, "I'm hungry."

Sam's still thinking really hard. He doesn't move. "You didn't have anybody to help you out after, did you? After the surgery to fix it and the blood loss and going to jail?"

Yeah, well, the fact that he doesn't have friends anymore isn't one of Chuck's favorite subjects. Leaving town, abandoning most his stuff and playing dead finished off what the alcoholism started. Never talked to Sara or Phil again. Didn't contact the fans or make any stirrings through his pen name.

Just living paycheck to paycheck, making sure nothing with black eyes followed him home.

He tries to shove away with his foot but... Sam's abs are ridiculous and he's more likely to stub his toe on them than dissuade Sam from trying to find a social life for him.

"Charlie read the books, you know. She never thought she'd meet you. She wants to."

Oh, yeah. Because he wants to meet more fans of the books. He yanks the pillow out from under his head and deposits it on top of his face.

"You never leave your apartment."

"Well, you come to me," he says, muffled.

"Don't you ever talk to-"

Sam lets him worm away and then Chuck escapes down the hall.

Because he's really, stupidly good at this, Sam wanders up behind Chuck while he's at the counter, assembling some half-assed breakfast. His hand skims up and under his shirt again and worries once more at the bruise. He hangs on to Chuck's hips and looms at his back, heavy like he knows the angels' wings are (or used to be).

He's half hard and hungry and the hungry isn't really winning but he's putting on a show of it because Sam wants to be patient, take this in steps, even if his _hands_ don't act like it.

Sam just wants him to have friends and be happy and _live_. It's awful how he wants that for everybody. Because Sam, himself, doesn't get to have half those things.

"I'll come hang out at the bunker for a while," he concedes.

"And go a few places with us? You've never met Jody."

Jody Mills is still alive. That's nice. Well. You know. Her fucking family is dead, but it's still nice, he supposes.

Goddamnit. Having friends is a real downer. He doesn't wanna do this.

He reaches for a glass of water and says, "I've never met that guy Garth, either."

Sam presses a smile behind his ear.

«»

Sam leaves half his stuff behind when he goes, now. He's got a Chuck's house toothbrush and a Chuck's house razor and a Chuck's house shampoo set and a few sleep clothes specifically for Chuck's house. Though Chuck might throw those out and tell him "oh, hmm, you must have left them at a motel" because it's like one feeble step closer to getting him to sleep in the nude. Which won't happen, but he has to _try_.

They Team Free Will it up, with their powers combined or whatever, and meet in New York for a case. It's got a really bad plot. Sam tells him over the phone. Chuck suspects it's a skinwalker before they do and he puts twenty dollars down on it and wins. When they stop back by to drop Sam off, after, Dean forks over his share entirely in loose nickels.

Sore loser.

(Cas breaks his into fives and quarters because he finds those convenient and was being polite. He is such a fucking _alien_.)

Sam didn't think he'd actually have to cough up his money and, well, after a half hour of making out, yes, Chuck pretty much forgets about it. Sam does that thing where he scoops his hands under his legs and lifts Chuck onto the counter. He apologizes, after, when things are cooling down, but Chuck likes it. He doesn't have the energy for even a token objection. He yanks Sam back in and hikes a leg around his torso.

Sam slowly learns that Chuck likes to be handled. His tastes have evolved to pretty much this: he wants someone to move and shape him and tell him what they're gonna do to him and he wants to shudder and take it. He wants to be good and get a little used and feel wrung out and have somebody else blow through him like a hurricane.

So, Sam has permission to put him wherever he wants him.

He has hopes that, knowing this, Sam will feel free to, you know, Surprise! sex him up one day. Just come in and drag him off and toss him on the bed.

But so far he's only really been using it to make sure Chuck sits down and eats and leaves the house to buy new shoes and go grocery shopping and switch it up at independent coffee houses instead of the three Starbucks locations he knows.

He worries that maybe Sam doesn't want to have that much power over him; that he's concerned with what he'd do with it. But Chuck doesn't want to build a BDSM fuckpalace and get tied up with rope every day. He just wants Sam to display his considerable strength because it fucking turns him on.

Eventually, he almost says that. Chuck almost tries to explain. But then there's a phone call and a case. And out of the blue, Sam says, "Come with next time? I know you've got that game to go to this week. But next time." He comes close and he says, "Please?" and Chuck knows that's code for, _I don't wanna beg, but I'm asking 'cause I need this_.

He pulls Sam's head down and kisses him and says, "Okay."

"Okay," Sam repeats.

He drops his bags at the front door and turns to descend on Chuck's mouth just one more time. Takes the glasses right off Chuck's nose, holds his face and says, stunned, reverent, "Oh my god, I fucking love you."

«»

In the same doorway where he'd paused, the day before, to see Sam off, Chuck stands stock still.

He slowly puts the mail and the box key on the table next to the door. He leaves a paycheck on top.

"W-who. Uh. Are you?" he asks, his voice strangled.

He already knows. But the angel in the center of his apartment doesn't have to know that. He knows the angels in his bones. Like it's just as hard-wired into him as it is them. He knows every member of their family, and the frequency that their grace tones in on has a direct line to his spine. It locks up his insides and he truly feels a plague of _fear_ blacken the sky for the first time since the last, encroaching days of the apocalypse.

He always worried about the wrong thing following him home.

«»

This is really unfortunate for a lot of reasons.

Sam, of course, isn't going to come back around until the series of hauntings in Oklahoma has ended.

So no one's coming for him. No one will know Chuck has gone missing.

And, aside from knowing the angels better than he wants to, he is pretty sure he doesn't have any of the information that this one wants to extract from him.

He is also uncomfortably familiar with how angelic kind tend to get information out of each other. And it's not extended chat sessions or even screaming interrogations.

It's torture as a high-art form. It's blood and slow knives and scorching burns and threatening everyone you know. Erasing pieces of you from existence wherever available.

The fact that this angel has to strap him into a car and can't just wing him off to a magical room outside of space and time is... maybe not a positive, but the smallest mercy he knows of in the foreseeable future.

Once, when he'd been given the knowledge of how bad it was gonna get, how the war was gonna start and the apocalypse would rain down on the earth-- when he saw the Winchesters being worn by their enemies (for he knew them as enemies long before the Winchesters accepted them as such) and the grim sets of their unanimated faces as they started to kill each other--

He told Zachariah that he'd just kill himself.

He knew it wouldn't change anything. He didn't need that smarmy fuck to tell him so.

Chuck didn't wanna see it. Didn't wanna see it and know he was incapable of doing anything to change it.

The angel's name is Sandalphon. And whatever he wants is connected to the Winchesters. Because Metatron is his twin.

Chuck only knows what happened with Metatron because Sam has been catching him up as best as he can. He genuinely doesn't know anything else about the tablets or this angel's sibling other than that he's a complete dick.

Sandalphon is much bigger than the body he's living in. Energy bursts at the seams of the vessel, still reasonably tall, but nothing in comparison to the true height of the being inside.

He is angry like Michael was angry. Silent and still and promising obliteration.

Chuck is set up on a steel chair in an incomplete house, in an incomplete suburb. He knows where he is, but the area is completely nondescript, itself. Just another empty lot where rows and rows of houses will one day stand, uniform as picket fences.

Sandalphon unloads his pockets on the concrete in front of Chuck. A cloth, a rope, two angel blades, and then.... tools. Probably objects picked up from underneath tarps and inside trucks left around the block. Screwdrivers and pliers and nails and hammers.

Chuck's unreasonable fear of hammers sets him to twitching a little.

Fucking _Misery_. For fuck's sake.

Sandalphon notices. He slides the hammer handle into his pants pocket and lifts one of the two shining blades.

"You will tell me what they've done to my brother," he speaks at last. Calm as a mirrored lake.

"I don't know how."

"How?"

Chuck swallows. "I don't know what I can tell you. They haven't seen him in months. And I never saw him. Not once."

Sandalphon drops the blade to hold horizontal in his hand. And walks forward until it is pressed against the center of Chuck's forehead.

"Once, in this head, you kept all the knowledge of prophecy. There are no other living prophets. This is as it should be. But while I've got you, still here, on this fetid, stinking planet, I still have prophecy at my hands. Everything you write shall come to pass."

Chuck closes his eyes. "I don't write anything but sad short stories about alcoholic writers and sports columns," he prattles, "if I could prophesize anything, I'd be betting on the games before I bothered writing about them. I fucking swear to you: I-I-I don't _know_ anything."

The blade flips in his hand with just a flicker of movement. The end of it sweeps across Chuck's face, drawing a thin line of blood down and across, from his eyebrow to his cheek. He flinches.

Sandalphon reels his arm back and sweeps the hilt of the blade into Chuck's face.  
Knocks him out cold.

«»

Chuck can't quite keep track of the time. The active area of construction around the houses means that Sandalphon covers his head, quiets him during the day and, at night, he drills Chuck on what he knows. Follows every line of it. Demands answers until Chuck can't _give_ answers. Sam would have to forgive him, _have to_ for telling all he knows. It's what keeps him from getting hit more.

It doesn't last long. Sandalphon has started in on Chuck's fingers. He broke the fourth and fifth fingers on his left hand. The radiating pain, the throbbing, makes him nauseous and is giving him the waves of headache that used to mean it was time to load up and drink.

The hammer is poised over Chuck's thumb when Sandalphon stops. Hears a noise, and whirls to follow it. He's out of the room for long minutes before there's a fight, those thick, wet sounds of flesh splitting and breaking in punches, and a shot. Three shots.

"Got him," Chuck can hear Dean's voice say.

He gasps and chokes on a curse. "Fuck," he says, and once more with feeling, " _fuck_."

Dean's voice, a phone conversation, follows Castiel inside the room and Cas stoops to start pulling at the knots holding Chuck down, simply snapping them with his strength. "Now go north. First house on the right," Dean instructs, and comes around to the side, flicking out a knife and cutting the bonds. "You got it?" he asks, the phone between his ear and shoulder. "He's breathin'. He's fine. Chuck, you alright?"

"Can I get back to you on that?" he sounds as weak as he feels.

The sound of a car skidding to a halt outside. To Sam's voice on the phone he says, "Yeah, I hear ya," Dean ends the call and he and Cas get to his side, taking his arms.

"Can you walk?" Cas asks.

"Probably, I donno."

They help him up and out toward the open garage where Sam is marching up, looking like murder stacked 9 feet high, drops his shotgun, and almost collides with them, scooping Chuck up, turning him out of Dean and Cas's grip.

Over Sam's shoulder, he can just barely see Cas has turned to the floor, struggling to get Sandalphon into the back seat of the Impala. Probably to take him off to Hannah's sandbox. He sees him try to talk reason but the other angel starts up with the shouting again. Chuck really hates the shouting. He would cover his ears if he could. He closes his eyes and sinks into Sam.

"Tell me you're okay," Sam pleads.

Chuck lets Sam hold him up. "Can we go? Can we please just go?"

"Yeah," Sam says into his neck.

He turns Chuck away from the other car and says something to Dean that makes him nod, get in, and drive away.

Sam carefully maneuvers Chuck around, like he'll fall to pieces if he bumps into the car door. He sits him down and crouches by the passenger seat, helping him settle. Chuck raises his broken hand and motions to the seat belt buckle. Sam wraps careful fingers around Chuck's wrist and looks at the messy, cracked knuckles. He presses a fierce kiss to the side of Chuck's head, then leans in to buckle him into the seat. Sam only pauses one moment more to breathe Chuck in, heads pressed together. Then he carefully shuts the door and rounds to the driver's side.

He keeps Chuck's writing hand held, cushioned on his thigh for the drive. Traces over the unbroken bones with his own fingers at stoplights.

«»

Chuck and Sam crowd into the tiny motel bathroom together.

This has become a big part of Chuck's life. Blood streaks and weak knees in dingy green-tiled bathrooms.

Sam maneuvers Chuck where he needs to go. All Chuck's gotta do is move his feet. Sam brackets him with his legs against the cabinet and counter. He kisses apologies into Chuck's face as he wipes blood away, revealing clean skin.

His jaw feels bruised from being hit. He doesn't know he has a pretty severe black eye until Sam can't scrub any more blood off and the eye doesn't open more than a sliver, it's so swollen. Sam's face almost crumples entirely. He tosses what he was holding in the sink and pulls Chuck in, gingerly. Kisses his face, his nose, the corner of his mouth and holds him.

Sam's whispering how he's sorry and he's awful and this isn't any good, this isn't working out like he'd hoped. Broken fingers or no, Chuck could just wallop him for that shit.

In reality, he can't do much of anything, though. He's sore all over and tired and sad and he wants to be held. His eyebrow leaves a bloody print on Sam's jacket. It needs a stitch or seven.

Sam carefully directs his face back and kisses his mouth.

Chuck brings his good hand up and clings.

There may have been a lot more of this in his life, recently, between the demons that came after him and the hunts Sam has been telling him about. And he may have witnessed some serious fucking brutality back in the day, in the prophecy, but he hadn't been ready for _this_.

Sam realizes Chuck's crying before he does and the sobs build and he has to take him to bed to curl around him and protect him and calm him down.

He's not just some civilian, but it's never felt that way. He's in this war for life, just like the Winchesters. And he never wanted that. He was never ready. But he has to be ready from now on and he shouldn't be bummed that the best place for him, anymore, is with them. By Sam's side. Ready to fight or at least defend. He knows how to do it. He just doesn't want to. He wasn't ready. He wasn't prepared for this. He's always been scared of the pain.

He's always been scared of pain, bottom line.

He drank half his life away drowning out the mere possibility of pain.

He's in a fuckload of pain, now. Bloody and broken and battered.

If he had been prepared, like Sam told him to be, if he'd been more cautious, used all the knowledge he had access to instead of ignoring it, he wouldn't have experienced this pain in the first place.

Sam keeps him curled up with him. When he has to get up to get something to stop the sluggish bleeding on his brow, he cocoons Chuck in the sheets, first, and returns as fast as he can.

"It took so long. It took two days, Chuck. It felt like forever. I'm- I know it must have felt longer to you. But I had no idea. I." Sam only cleans and bandages what he can. It'll probably be a hospital trip for the rest. But not right now. If Chuck has to be away from Sam for the length of time it takes for a fucking x-ray he will lose his goddamn shit. "I called and I called and it was- god. It was only three calls before I flipped out. Dean was so fed up with me. But I guess I must have known somehow. He thought I was full of shit the whole time. Your apartment was- it was just normal. Quiet. But you left a paycheck just sitting there. I knew. Dean wasn't so sure. But Cas believed me."

Cas knows how it is. That, Chuck does not doubt for a second.

Sam paws at his head and makes him comfortable on his side. He goes to the wrong side of the bed so he can curl up behind Chuck and make him feel alright, mindful to keep his hand out of the way. "Think you can sleep?" he kisses the back of his head.

"I think I can if you--" he tugs on Sam's arm. "Tighter. And keep talking. Tell me about the case."

There's a sick little desperation in Sam's thin laugh. "This one or the other one?"

"The other one," Chuck yawns and settles into Sam's warmth. "Just keep talking," he turns a little and asks: "Please?"

Sam kisses him, and then Chuck listens to the rumble of his voice in his chest, telling a ghost story that's just another Wednesday for a Winchester.

«»

Sam lets Chuck sit on his lap most the morning. He doesn't seem to really like the idea of letting him go, anyway, and he's the only one who cares to keep ice on Chuck's hand, keep it elevated. The cold burns, then numbs. And the cubes knock into his fingers and make him yelp. Sam is more careful with the hand than Chuck is on his own.

Dean and Cas are back by the afternoon and Sam shoots Castiel what can only be described as a death glare.

Cas stands up to it, though. He asks _permission_ , holding out two fingers in Chuck's direction. "May I?"

At a nod, he simply touches Chuck's head and there's a sickening zip of sinew and snap of bone and drain of blood as he's healed.

"Ugghgh," Chuck shivers. "Groooss."

"Finally, somebody says it," Dean pipes up from behind Cas. "It's so fucked up."

"Right?? I mean, thanks and all, but that is the strangest, nastiest thing you could possibly feel happening to your insides," Chuck flexes his fingers and rolls his neck.

"Thanks, Cas," Sam says. "Tell me something awful is happening to that fucker."

"Sandalphon is in a cell. The angels will deal with him," Cas says. He wouldn't kill him, but he would readily distance himself from the whole situation. Cas may still be the same species but he seems to have disavowed connection to them entirely.

Him and Chuck are refugees, now. Cas from the Angelic Host, Chuck from humanity. Winchesters have to choose to be something else.

Cas gives him a weird look like he almost picked that up on his radio.

"Dean and I will head back to Oklahoma and start over. Perhaps you should rest," Cas says to them.

"Yeah, we got this one," Dean plucks at the sleeve of Cas's jacket. "C'mon. Keep your phone on, Sammy," he calls over his shoulder.

"Yeah. Lemme know."

They let the door close. Sam turns Chuck and pulls him over toward the desk lamp. He checks his face, his eyes, his jaw, his neck his head, sweeping his thumbs and skimming his fingers all over. He pulls Chuck's hand up and lays a kiss over his unbroken knuckles.

"I love you," Chuck mentions, dazed, like it isn't the first time he's said it to Sam directly.

Sam looks like somebody's got a gun to his head.

"Um. Do you wanna go home? You don't have to go back there yet if you don't want."

"Yeah. I mean, it's fine. All my stuff's there."

"Well, I mean," Sam shifts, "I can get some of your stuff and you can stay at the bunker for a while."

Chuck tilts his head. "Let's see. Come on. I need coffee."

«»

Sam holds his hand at Starbucks. Or presses a possessive hand to his back, crowded against him. If anyone dared to talk shit about it right now he would probably pick up one of the oversized ceramic mugs and just go to town on their face. Sam does not look like he slept. He didn't sleep when Chuck was missing and it doesn't seem like he slept last night. Chuck's broken hand never jostled in his sleep, bolts of pain didn't wake him from simple night-time shifting, so he can only imagine Sam stayed up all those hours, holding it in place, willing Cas to get done with his angel bullshit and head back to heal Chuck already.

The barista running the register makes a kind of "aw" face at them and draws matching halves of a heart on their cups, next to their names.

He'd be embarrassed but he has caffeine and he's not in pain and Sam won't stop touching him so he is utterly unbothered.

After coffee, Sam goes from bristly and edgy to sharp. Chuck's fine, really, he is. Aside from the fact that he's a little traumatized, but when is he _not_ traumatized?

Sam insists on carrying everything himself, making sure Chuck isn't left alone, and opening doors for him. That part's kinda weird but he remembers Sam after Mystery Spot.

He doesn't do well when the option to protect someone has just been yanked right out of his hands.

Chuck knows he's majorly at fault for that, whether or not Sam says so.

Just as he knows every desperate thought and moment of self-hatred Sam's had since his fucking college years, Chuck is also fully aware of how to properly ward against angels.

They may not have their wings anymore, but they've got grace. They can be banished from a place or prevented from entering entirely. And as much as it was _demons_ he worried about, despite Sam's warnings, he never warded against them, either.

Oh god.

What if Sam makes him get the tattoo?

The thought of the pain is a major threat to his current stability, but, more than that, how fucking _gauche_ would it be to get the tat that his own books made cult-famous?

Gross.

He will avoid even tip-toeing near the subject for as long as possible.

It's not a long drive. The motel was a base of operations for their search and it was closer to the abduction site than to Chuck's place. He has a feeling that Sam wouldn't have let Dean and Cas stay there, anyway.

Sam's so private he probably considered it an invasion for them to be investigating his disappearance there. He wouldn't even want Dean to see that he leaves his hairbrush there.

He's been splitting time between Chuck's apartments and the bunker for a while, now, but Chuck knows how he feels about home. About _real_ homes and about places where the job can't reach.

There's something there. Something Sam's face has been giving away that he's not picking up on.

He's got to wade through all of Sam's _undeserving_ feelings to get there and, right now, that's kind of a tall order, what with him silently angry, stewing, miserable in the driver's seat.

But there's something there. As a character, Sam was always pretty good about circling back to the source. Maybe he has to wait on that, for now.

They'd picked the lock to get inside when he didn't answer, but Sam must have found the key because he's got it ready to unlock Chuck's place when they arrive.

Chuck has a spare somewhere. When he gets in, he digs for it in the desk and comes back around, gives it to Sam.

"You should keep that. Thanks for not breaking the door down."

Woah.  
There it is.

Flash of something across Sam's features like he's under threat again. Or about to whirl and fight something.

He straightens up and covers for it, though.

"We- you gonna. Um. Did you decide if you want to stay here?" Sam pushes his hair behind his ears on either side. It's a subtle, open-faced gesture. He's trying to be positive about whatever Chuck needs in this moment because he's the victim. If he wants company or he wants to be alone.

Sam looks like he wants to leave Chuck alone just about as much as he wants to call Sandalphon back down and be BFFs.

"I think for now?" Chuck isn't exactly sure. He doesn't want to get yelled at over the wards. He isn't sure he really wants to be cloistered in the bunker. Technically he has writing to do but maybe angel abduction gets him a pass on that.

If not with the editor, then at least with himself.

Sam fiddles with the key. He looks down at it and talks to his hands. Before Chuck can answer the original question, Sam asks, "Will you do me a favor?"

Chuck cringes. "Probably not."

Sam looks up and cocks his head, hurt.

Chuck is sure this is what he's been dreading. Wards or tattoos or guns or angel blades or something. "You know what a flake I am," he shrugs. "I might say I'll do something and not end up doing it. So, you know, just don't get your hopes up is all."

Sam exhales and a wry smile twists up the side of his face. "I think you'll manage on this one."

Chuck falls to a lean against the kitchen counter. "Okay."

Just one step - Sam only takes one step closer. He stares down again and taps the key against his thumbnail. "Please hear me out," tap tap. He doesn't put the key in his pocket. "I'm so sorry I brought you into this," his voice slips off, almost a whisper.

Chuck's head drops. He tries not to roll his eyes.

"I was thinking of this place as a refuge, I guess, and I wasn't thinking about who would follow me here-"

"Stop it."

"You were out of the life. And when the demons came after you- after, I should have just left-"

"Sam, _stop it_."

"I would have- I should have gone- I wasn't. I thought, you know, you were out and you'd gotten by under the radar so long that maybe- but it wasn't safe and I'm sor-"

" _Will you fucking look at me??_ " it comes out just this side of hysterical, like everything else Chuck intends to be deadly serious.

Sam does look up but his eyes are narrowed and he's--

Goddamnit, he's so fucking TALL, and Chuck is so NOT INCLINED toward violence, why can't he just be the kind of person who could hit him and show him he means fucking business?!

"You're not cursed!" he yells. "It's not a curse! I know what curses LOOK LIKE. I know how to DO THEM if I damn well wanted to, Sam, and so do you. This isn't the Winchester curse following me home, this was something Heaven decided for me before I was even born and some asshat just followed the threads until he found me. He would have found me if you weren't here and I'd have ten broken everythings on my hands and feet and sometimes bad shit DOES NOT ACTUALLY fall in your lap!!" he stops to breathe. "Sometimes it doesn't follow you home it follows somebody else. I left the fucking door unlocked to go to the-the community thingy-"

"The mailbox-"

"THE MAILBOX to get my mail. I was getting the fucking mail. And I--" he sighs, his shoulders fall all over the place, he throws his head back and he admits it. "I haven't warded the place. I haven't ever warded my apartments. I don't ever do it and I won't ever do it unless you make me because- Well. Because you're gonna make me," he throws up a hand between them. "I know you are and. And please don't make me get a tattoo because those are really-- needley. And really permanent. And very painful."

Sam still looks like a kicked puppy. The edge of determination is gone and he is just.

He is just _so sad_.

"Please do me just one favor," Sam asks, low and pleading.

"NO! How about no!" Chuck goes to march determinedly away and nails himself on the edge of the _f u c k i n g_ table again. He spins, holding his side and there's a moment of silent cringing in the kitchen before he hisses out pain. "Owwwwwww, FUCK. Fucking fuck. FUCK."

Sam is clinging to him in the next moment, their hands clamped over the spot, just putting pressure to abate the sting. It's minor. So very minor in comparison to Sandalphon getting tired of not having answers and unceremoniously cracking the hammer down on his finger.

Sam's hand rubs at his other side while they wait for the first waves of shocking pain to dissipate, as they will. Like a funny-bone blow or a stubbed toe or any other minor household accident. That fucking table is out to get him, though, that's for _damn_ sure.

Chuck finally moves his hand away and Sam lifts his shirt and they see a big angry mark, little pinprick spots of red risen to the surface even though the skin hasn't actually broken.

"I guess I'll live-" Sam interrupts him, kissing him.

He persists until Chuck is distracted enough not to rub at the red mark, then breaks away.

"You have to do this for me. You have to say yes."

"Ugh. To what?" Chuck's eyes drop closed and he leans against Sam.

"Move in with me or tell me I can stay here."

That.  
Kind of wasn't what he was expecting.

Maybe something more self-deprecating, like Sam asking him to lose his number and sever all connection and save himself from the fake Winchester curse.

This is kind of the opposite of that.

He's actually just really pleased when Sam can still surprise him. If he were still the Sam from the prophecy, it would be so boring.

Chuck _loves_ character development something _fierce_.

He looks up in wonder and Sam must think it's doubt because he jumps further, "I'll do anything. Literally anything. I'll- I don't know. Whatever you want." He turns Chuck's face up to him. "Please say yes. Please. Please?"

It's that last, desperate 'please.' The one he's been using when he can't stand it anymore. When Chuck's right in front of him but he's starting to doubt it's real, anyway. When he says 'please' like that Chuck is the one who has to take the calm into his hands. He has to get a grip on his spasmodic psyche and sweep his hands over Sam's hair and call him Sammy and make sure he has enough kisses, at last, to remember that this is not some trick, some illusion, some wonderful, terrible dream, but a reality that has sincerely developed through progress and trust.

And sexual tension.

"I want sex," is the fucking moronic thing that comes out of his mouth.

Sam nods, nearly frantic, "I can do that, okay, I can do that. Whatever you want."

"Nope! No. That was the wrong answer. Uh. Sorry. I didn't mean you have to give me sex to move in with me. That was the stupid thing that came out of my mouth when you were like 'tell me what you want' and my dick spoke up before I did."

"Okay," Sam shrugs, "what do you want?"

"I--" Chuck has to think about that. "I want. I do want you to move in. Or to move in with you. And I don't know? This is really sudden. I mean, it's good. But sudden. I want. Um."

Sam descends on his mouth. For a while.

When he finally pulls back he asks, "You wanna just start with the sex and go from there?"

"Yeah?"

Sam doesn't respond to that except to distract Chuck with another intense fucking kiss, walking him backwards and then breaking away to guide him around the couch. He pretty much tosses Chuck down, which is one of his favorite things, truth be told. But he doesn't follow. He doesn't lay him back and crawl over him.

He drops to his knees in front of the couch and goes after Chuck's belt buckle.

It takes Chuck a second to catch up.  
Then he helps.

Sam gets through his button and zipper quick and pulls Chuck's dick out before he's entirely, um, ready, but Sam doesn't seem to have a problem with that. He hauls Chuck's legs over his shoulders, puts hands under him to haul him forward, and just starts sucking at his cock. Lots of tongue, wet and coaxing at first, and then Chuck is hard in his mouth and wait what the fuck is he supposed to do with his hands again? He pushes Sam's hair out of the way and Sam looks up and holy fuck.

They stare at each other while Sam is taking his cock in his mouth and that is... that is just fucking magical, thank you.

He wants to say that or something. Praise Sam, maybe, and run his fingers through his hair and encourage him on, but Sam has slowed to these long, intense movements and this is going way faster than anticipated.

Sam reads that or he's just, you know, fucking perfect and wonderful in every way. He slows and cups his tongue around the head and then dips forward, pushing Chuck's shirt up, kissing at the new bump from the kitchen table. He takes Chuck in his fist and moves teasing and slow while he kisses and sucks at where the other bruise used to be.

His thumb does this thing and Chuck's hands slam down, one on the couch, one on Sam's shoulder. "Ofuc-owoah woah woah, yes, fuck, hold on, not yet."

Sam lets him go and breathes hot, heavy across his skin, trailing his lips.

Breaths jerk out of Chuck as Sam comes across sensitive areas, or, like, who knows? Suddenly sensitizes previously unsexy parts of Chuck's body simply by being _him_.

Sam pries his hand from the couch and sucks on the two fingers that had been broken and suddenly Chuck is chanting, "not yet not yet not yet not yet ofuck-"

Sam pulls back, kisses down to his wrist, but lets go. And sits back. Without having to move Chuck's legs all that much, he grabs his shirt off and tosses it.

"Okay," Chuck says out loud, because that's not really helping with the not coming immediately thing he was aiming for. Miles of hot skin and holy shit. Sam rises between his legs and comes up to kiss his mouth. He resituates Chuck's legs around him.

"Take a deep breath," Sam has to say.

Chuck needs a little help, a little bit of an example, but they get through it together.

"Tell me what you want," Sam says then.

"Um," his voice seems stuck down in his chest. "I." Jesus, this is like getting to pick from anything on the menu with no concern for price. He wants the steak, he wants your finest French wine, he wants to sample every appetizer. He skids his fingers up Sam's naked torso. He orders dessert. "Yeah, I think you're gonna have to fuck me."

"Okay. You wanna move?"

"Yes, please."

"You want me to carry you?" he smirks.

"You don't have to ask that, just assume the answer is 'yes' from now on, I like that part."

"Yeah, actually," Sam wraps his arms around him and hikes his legs up his sides. "I'm gonna ask anyway because I think it's kinda strange that you like it."

"Um, hey. I think it's kinda strange you eat soybeans as a snack, but this is a no-judgment zone, Sam."

Sam kisses his neck, "They were wasabi peas."

"Peas are not a snack."

He really, really likes the being carried part. It is not a joke. He likes that Sam strips the both of them, too, and gets the condoms and stuff, and gets pillows under him.

Sam likes being useful, anyhow, so when he slips back between Chuck's legs, he just pushes back Sam's hair, skims his fingers over the curves of his ears and says, "Hey, thanks."

And that's all it takes to get a radiant smile in return. "You're welcome. I'm gonna come in like six fucking seconds," he announces, because yeah, he's been rock solid there the whole time and dripping. Looking down at Chuck and then breathing, pausing, focusing to stave it off.

"Maybe me too. It's cool. We'll get better at it."

That, more than anything, is what drives Sam to just up and rut against him.

The fucking promise of tomorrow.

So, yeah, they don't get far, both coming in Sam's fist and then dissolving into emotional messes, clinging to one another and kissing and being weirdly passionate. Sam's hands huge and all over him and not letting go. Chuck sticky, sweaty, and not caring. Realizing he can be the complete goddamn mess that he is, still lusting after cold beer and hardly ever able to organize sentences as they come out of his mouth, but Sam will stay. Sam _asked_ to stay.

Sam turns Chuck on his side and curves along his back. He keeps his palm over the red mark on Chuck's hip. "Short and pointy," he says into his ear.

"Yes, I get it, you're arguing in favor of the bunker because that evil table doesn't live there," Chuck slurs into the pillow.

Sam kisses his ear and asks, "Are you really moving in with me? Or am I, you know...?"

"Yes. Stop doubting it. It's true. I have foreseen it. I'll write it down and get it published if you want."

"That's not funny," Sam says, turning him over and making him moan, stroking his ass. He pulls himself closer, throwing a leg over Sam's hip.

Chuck's only conscious long enough to nail down that look that was haunting Sam before. That's how he looked before he asked Jess if they could move in together. He's freaked the fuck out but he wants it anyway. He's gonna do it anyway and they're gonna be careful and live to be reluctant saviors for another few years. Because they've grown into their wisdom and they'll do it better than they ever have before.

"Thank you, character development," Chuck says, pulls Sam into a kiss, and is snoring on his arm in the next moment.

«»

Sam is looking out from the side of the stage, beyond the curtain, over the modest audience in conference room C. He arches over Chuck's head to do it. Chuck hasn't exactly been able to move for the last five minutes. He is a statue of dread.

He thaws for a moment, looking at the time. Still ten minutes before he actually has to sit in front of people and act like he's got smart shit to say.

He turns and he pushes Sam back further into the dark. He looks up and he fucking _begs_ : "Please?"

Sam's face softens from mild amusement to sympathy. He tucks Chuck into his arms and kisses him until he's okay. Until he can remember that the panel only lasts an hour. Sixty minutes. And there are smarter guys up there who have written more books and comics and will be of way more interest to the audience. And Charlie has sworn to distract Dean and Cas in the main con hall by getting them photo ops with Nathan Fillion. So they won't be there to heckle.

It's a panel called "Religion and the Supernatural in Cult Fiction." He's getting paid to answer maybe three questions. Probably no one will even be that interested in asking him much of anything. He's signed two books the whole weekend. Only been recognized four times. It's a breeze and it's a check and Charlie and the Winchesters are having fun. It's a small price to pay to watch them be so at ease.

"I love you a lot more than I hate this," he says detaching from Sam's lips. "Just for the record."

"You want something else to think about that you're gonna hate? So you don't have to be nervous the whole hour?"

God, Sam knows him so well. "Yes. Hit me."

"So, you know Dean dragged me to that gun show last week? He kept trying to convince me I needed to buy you an engagement weapon."

"Goddamnit. What an asshole. Tell me more."

"He thinks there ought to be time limits on how long everybody can use the showers and he's noticed that I don't do the dishes so he wants a chore schedule with Cas and Charlie and everybody on it. Though, admittedly, those are both pretty much my fault."

"Cas doesn't even make dirty dishes, that's gonna be a treat."

"I know. And he also said you should be more concerned with my image. I think he expects you to demand that I get my hair cut more often?"

"What is he _on_??"

"He's just on some shit. He just thinks everything is sooo funny," Sam sing-songs.

Hmm. That's enough to get Chuck stewing for at least a while. Sam leans down and engulfs him in his arms even more.

"Three minutes. I should let you go. You want me to sit out there?"

"No. Yes. I donno."

«»

Dean cops to it all, when they're back at the convention hotel eating dinner. Sam follows after Cas to get him a picture with the whole cosplaying cast of Doctor Who characters and Chuck sinks into his chair. Dean's smirking at him.

"Stop that shit with the engagement shit. Don't say that to Sam," Chuck is serious about this. He doesn't want Dean to be forcing Sam into these conventional roles or whatever. He, of all people, knows damn well that's not how they operate in their family. Trying to equalize Chuck with everyone else who came into Sam's life, before, would also be an ugly mistake. Sam hasn't said he's bothered by it but Dean's been annoying enough to get him looking at ads for apartments nearby the bunker. Being all crammed in together, no matter how great they are at it, is still ridiculous and fucking stressful sometimes. More so considering that Claire keeps coming by so often, it's entirely possible she'll just sleep in her spare room one day and never leave.

Chuck isn't against the concept of the Winchester family expanding to encompass more people. He just thinks Dean is maybe maniacally overenthusiastic about tying them all together.

Dean kicks back in his chair and squints at his brother from a distance. "Just saying," he crosses his arms. "It's almost there, you know. Chuck Winchester."

"That's not," Chuck throws up his hands and drops them. "That's not helpful."

"Yeah, you're right. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Charles Emerson Winchester III, now _that_ has a little better ring to it."

Chuck roooolls his eyes. "Well we can't all be born to such regal families, Hawkeye. And how long have you been waiting to lay out that joke?"

Dean laughs all satisfied with himself. "Anyway, you'll see. The big softie'll get there."

"Dean," Chuck aims to warn again.

"Chuck! It's not exactly unexpected," he shrugs him off.

Chuck narrows his eyes. Smiles as Sam and Cas make their approach back to the table.

"Sam Shurley," Chuck muses. "Now that _does_ roll off the tongue," he smirks at Dean.

Dean looks _so offended_.  
"Don't you _fucking dare_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3K1UlEaVGw))


End file.
